Which forklift brand is best? How to choose from 60 MHE suppliers

When you need to replace several forklifts or expand your fleet, it almost always starts with the same question: which forklift brand is best? It is a logical question, but it rarely produces a useful answer.

Several suppliers are approached and the first quotations come in. Then the comparing starts: which trucks are cheapest, which have the best specifications, and what is included as standard with one supplier while being an extra with another?

But the most important question usually goes unasked. Are you actually comparing the same solution? An MHE purchase is considerably more complex than putting a few prices side by side.

Which forklift brands are there?

Anyone entering this market for the first time quickly discovers there are far more brands than the handful of names everyone knows. Alongside the large manufacturers there are specialists, emerging manufacturers, and brands offered mainly through importers, dealers or the used-equipment market.

Below are sixty names you can encounter on the Dutch market, in alphabetical order and without ranking or preference.

Some of these names have since been absorbed into another organisation. Atlet, TCM and UniCarriers now sit under Mitsubishi Logisnext, BT belongs to Toyota, and Aisle-Master is a Combilift product line. In practice you still come across those names regularly, certainly on the used market.

The market also keeps changing, and not every brand has the same scale, availability or representation in the Netherlands. Which brings the most important point straight to the surface: the fact that a brand is available does not mean it suits your organisation.

There is no best forklift brand

People search a lot for terms like best forklift brand or which forklift should I buy, and plenty of parties are happy to supply a ranking. If you are buying several trucks, that ranking is of little use to you.

A truck that performs excellently in one organisation can be unnecessarily expensive or insufficiently suitable in another. That difference rarely sits in the brand itself, but in how the machine is deployed and the conditions it works in.

That is why a good MHE purchase does not start with the question of which brand to buy. The first question is what your organisation actually needs. Only then does it become interesting to determine which brands and suppliers fit that need.

Where brands do differ

The fact that there is no best brand does not mean brands are equal. They simply differ on points that most comparisons never surface. These are the differences that weigh heaviest in practice.

Why comparing quotations is harder than it looks

Suppose you are looking for a number of electric forklifts and invite five suppliers. Each of them arrives with their own brand and their own proposal, and on paper those trucks look comparable.

Yet there can be big differences in configuration, battery, charger, safety, ergonomics, service and maintenance. What is supplied as standard with one brand is an extra with another. A quotation of 45,000 euros can therefore turn out better than one of 42,000 euros.

And even at an equal purchase price, total costs are not equal. Energy use, maintenance, wear, damage, downtime and residual value determine what a truck really costs across its entire service life. The cheapest quotation is therefore not automatically the cheapest solution.

Inviting five suppliers sounds sensible

In practice I regularly see organisations invite five or more suppliers for a new MHE investment. That feels safe, because you have plenty of quotations and therefore a broad comparison. The only question is how much of the market you have really looked at.

If you do not know upfront which brands suit your situation, you decide who gets to take part based on familiarity, past experience or gut feeling. That is not a selection on suitability, but on recognition.

It also swallows a lot of time. A meeting with a supplier easily takes an hour, but it does not stop there: phone calls, emails, preparation, site visits, follow-up questions and finally comparing all the proposals.

A serious MHE project can cost dozens of hours before you have a proper comparison on the table. If it then turns out the request was not sharp enough, part of that work starts again. So the question is not how many suppliers you should invite, but which ones.

Before making that selection, it is worth knowing whether your current fleet is the right size at all. The free Online Performance Check maps the whole operation in fifteen questions, and among other things flags whether your equipment still matches what the operation needs. If that is not clearly in view, there is a real chance you do not have the right number of forklifts, in either direction.

The salesperson knows the product, you need to know your requirement

A supplier knows a great deal about their own machines. Salespeople are trained in product knowledge and in positioning their solution, and that is part of their job. At the same time they represent one brand and have a commercial interest in the sale.

An independent consultant starts from a different point. A supplier makes their solution fit your question, while a consultant first determines which question you should be putting to the market.

That difference counts for more than it sounds. If you are not clear upfront about what you need, five suppliers will arrive with five solutions that each of them considers suitable. And then you are the one who has to decide who is right.

There is an imbalance on top of that. A salesperson sits in these conversations every week, while an organisation replacing its complete fleet does so perhaps once every five or ten years. Anyone who only discovers during the comparison what they should have been looking at has already invested a lot of time and given away part of their negotiating room.

First the request, then the suppliers

A good MHE purchase therefore starts before the first quotation. Not with the question of who may come and talk, but with the question of what the operation needs.

1. Establish what the operation really requires

   Map volumes, operating hours, distances, lift heights, floor surface, aisle widths and working conditions. This is the basis every further choice rests on.

2. Separate requirements from preferences

   Not every specification matters equally. Distinguishing between what is necessary and what would merely be pleasant prevents you paying for capabilities you barely use.

3. Determine which brands are relevant

   Only now does the brand list become useful. Based on application, service network and availability, sixty brands usually reduce to a handful of serious candidates.

4. Set out how suppliers must quote

   Prescribe which specifications, options and terms everyone has to state in the same way. Without that, you end up comparing interpretations instead of solutions.

5. Compare on total cost

   Put purchase or lease, maintenance, energy, insurance, financing, service life, residual value, service terms and downtime side by side. Only then does what an offer really costs become visible.

6. Negotiate on the whole package

   A longer warranty, a better response time or more favourable maintenance terms are often worth more across the contract term than a one-off discount on the purchase price. That is exactly what tender management and contract negotiation are about.

That way you are no longer comparing five different interpretations of your question, but five solutions to the same question. That is the difference between a quotation comparison and a genuine market comparison.

MHE is more than forklifts

A new investment is rarely only about forklifts. An organisation often deals with reach trucks, pallet trucks, stackers, order pickers and tow tractors, and sometimes automated solutions come into view.

That is exactly why it is unwise to think from the existing machine park or a familiar brand. The trucks you buy today remain part of your operation for years and help determine your costs for maintenance, energy, damage and downtime. The knowledge base holds more articles on forklift, reach truck and MHE advice, from fleet size to replacement timing.

A much more expensive and more extensive truck is not automatically better, certainly not when you barely use those extra capabilities. The right choice is not the heaviest truck, not the cheapest and not the best-known brand, but the solution that best matches what your operation needs across its whole service life.

First the right question, then the right trucks

The question of which forklift brand is best therefore has no general answer. All sixty names above can be part of the Dutch MHE market, but none of them is the best brand for every organisation in advance.

The right brand follows from the right request. And the right request follows from a good understanding of your own operation.