4 Tips for Optimizing Your Lumber Business’ Material Handling
Having effective material handling is critical for lumber dealers and distribution businesses. However, those material handling processes can become an entrenched, unquestioned part of those businesses’ processes, resulting in inefficiencies and even safety issues. For the sake of productivity, your bottom line, and your team’s safety, it’s time to rethink your existing processes and ensure you have the right tools. Here are a few tips and tools to know.
Equip Your Team with Name-Brand Customizable Hand Trucks
Equipping your team with high-quality, name-brand hand trucks is a must. Besides being better quality, name-brand equipment is more reliable, safer, and easier to use. Plus, the best hand trucks are modular, meaning you can customize them to fit your team’s use cases and environment. For example, hand trucks that are used outdoors or on challenging terrain can be customized with more aggressive wheels. Meanwhile, some dollies can be fitted with a stair climbing attachment for navigating staircases or with brake assemblies for enhanced speed control. Those customizations can significantly improve productivity, safety, and efficiency.
Include Appliance Hand Trucks in Your Fleet
When it comes to lumber dealers and distributors, material handling considerations tend to be focused on the yard and warehouse. However, material handling tasks are often a feature of the job for counter staff, showroom sales staff, and the outside sales staff, in addition to the yard and warehouse specialists. That makes versatile material handling solutions crucial. For instance, you might need to move bulky, heavy items weighing up to 800 pounds. Ensure that your employees have access to a quality, customizable appliance hand truck, also known as a heavy duty hand truck, for bigger, heavier manual material transport tasks.
Ensure You Have the Right Ramps
Along with having the right hand truck for the job, your team needs stable ramps to help them safely move products and other items. It’s all too easy for loads to be dropped because team members are trying to wrestle a loaded dolly over a curb or into a truck on two boards acting as a makeshift ramp. In addition to reducing productivity and resulting in often costly damage to the property being moved, those potential bottlenecks also increase the risk of injury. Finding the right curb and vehicle ramps is a material handling must.
Optimize Your Fleet’s Muscle with Powered Hand Trucks
Beyond the lumber itself, employees of lumber dealers and distributors are often required to move a wide variety of large, bulky, and heavy loads. That includes tools and parts, scrap and chips, wrapping and packaging, vehicle parts, and a lot more. Any number of those kinds of loads can require a robust material handling solution. A motorized or powered hand truck certainly fits the bill. Powered hand trucks can carry loads of up to 1,000 pounds on nearly any terrain with virtually no effort on the operator's part. They require no license to use and can be fitted with features like a trailer hitch attachment that allows employees to haul trailers by hand. These Powered hand trucks when paired with a trailer hitch attachment, can move an impressive 3,500 lbs.
About Magline
Worldwide, industry professionals rely on Magliner material handling tools to get the job done right. They trust every Magliner hand truck to help make their jobs easier and safer, allowing them to move a wide variety of items with ease. From delivery professionals to movers or warehouse workers, Magliner hand trucks are used far and wide. There’s a Magliner hand truck for every material handling need. Whether you need a 2 wheel dolly for soda deliveries or a powered stair climbing dolly to move vital medical equipment, there’s a Magliner for everyone. View the entire lineup today and take your material handling processes to the next level.
Explore the lineup of Magliner material handling tools at https://www.magliner.com/