Your employees have an hourly pay rate, and you can make an argument that your forklift does too. So, how much are you paying YOUR forklift?
We’ll explain.
Forklifts, as we’ve talked about before, need maintenance. Daily maintenance, per shift inspections, periodic inspections and parts replacements don’t just happen, they take effort and money. Maintaining your forklift according to the manufacturer’s specifications can save you money over the life of the truck.
For your own records, keeping track of your cost per hour is a great way of determining when you might need to invest in a new lift.
We estimate the average forklift use per 12 months is right around 1500 hours (actual use may vary, make sure you’re keeping track of your own hours). On a new LPG lift, you wouldn’t need that much maintenance (fuel excluded). Let’s say routine scheduled maintenance right around every 200 hours of use runs you $90- about 7.5 times per 1500 hours.
That’s $675 per year in routine maintenance (more if you have to replace something, but for this exercise let’s say you don’t). Divide $675 by 1500 hours, and in year one you’re paying your forklift 45 cents an hour.
Moving forward, keep track of your maintenance costs and divide the total at the end of the year by 1500.
By year four, when big internal services become necessary, in addition to tires and new forks and other items you may be spending as much as $4,000 on maintenance.
Let’s do that math: 4,000 divided by 1500 is… $2.60 an hour. For each forklift.
That doesn’t seem like a lot but you can make the argument that once your lift surpasses about $4 an hour- it’s beyond time to think about getting a new one.
Monitoring your forklift’s cost per hour is a great way to not only keep track of your real maintenance cost, but determining when it may be time to put your current lift to rest.
Questions? We’ve got the answers. Give our experts a call!