Cold Storage and distribution – how to keep materials handling costs from getting too hot

Equipment used in low temperature environments may have to be adapted in order to work efficiently; you may also have to consider that there could be extra considerations when it comes to servicing and maintaining the trucks too.

Now, this is where we come in!

The complete range of Toyota warehouse and counterbalance trucks have been designed to work effectively in chilled operations without modification. That’s right, from the universal hand pallet truck right up to our range of VNA trucks; our equipment can be operated at temperatures down to 0⁰C. This is due to their high quality build as part of the Toyota Production System, which guarantees the highest levels of quality, durability and reliability in our equipment. This also means that their servicing requirements don’t change down to that temperature either.

Let’s get down to some really cold temperatures!

If you’re using trucks in environments with temperatures down to -35⁰C, modification will be required and this takes careful consideration. Condensation is a major challenge in most cold store facilities; it forms on equipment when transitioning between cold and ambient areas. This will require your materials handling equipment to be modified. This means that trucks have to be specifically adapted to prevent corrosion and any potential ingress of moisture. The trucks servicing requirements may also require increasing to make sure your trucks are working reliably.

We’ve got a long history in working with customers who operate low temperature facilities, which is why we can help you to maintain your materials handling costs to counteract the cost of maintaining low temperature storage conditions.  We’re able to provide models from all product families to full cold store specification that will work in temperatures as low as -35⁰C. All of our cold store machines can be easily identified by the snowflake symbol.

Now, this is just scratching the surface of cold storage and the considerations you need to make! We’ll be releasing a series of blog posts regarding working in chilled environments.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help you manage costs in your chilled or frozen storage facility, call us on 0370 850 1409 today.