Industrial Personnel Carriers – Purpose-Built Material Handling Vehicles
Just as forklifts are tasked with moving large product volumes around warehouses, special material handling vehicles known as personnel carriers are utilized to transport humans across large warehouse spaces. These utility vehicles are equally nimble and heavy-duty, zipping people and small product volumes around a warehouse in ways that other vehicles cannot. Forklifts are not great at handling small products, and stock chasers cannot move groups of people, leaving personnel carriers as the perfect utility vehicle to fill both needs in a safe and productive manner.
Fig. 1 — Material Handling Personnel Carrier
By definition, personnel carriers are the shuttle buses of warehouse environments and are designed to serve two core operational objectives:
- Productivity — personnel carriers boost a warehouse’s productivity by enabling fast staff transportation and ad-hoc work tasks that span long distances. Compared to the alternatives of walking by foot inside or driving an automobile outside of the warehouse, personnel carriers are faster and more direct in getting their human riders to where they need to be.
- Health and Safety — incidental pedestrian traffic in a warehouse is already undesirable enough, and adding intentional long distance walking duties that cross heavy vehicle traffic is a recipe for disaster. Instead, warehouse staff can use personnel carrier vehicles to avoid the fatigue, muscle strain, dehydration, and heat stroke that can occur with excessive warehouse foot travel.
To meet these objectives, personnel carriers are designed in a wide array of configurations and styles. Most commonly, personnel carriers purchased for material handling environments are configured with electric drives, open tops (without a weather canopy), seating for one to eight passengers, a small material carry deck for grab-and-go loads, and with towing capacity to allow for additional seating carts or cargo trailers.
Ideal Use Cases for Industrial Personnel Carriers
While personnel carriers are clearly oriented towards moving groups of people around by name alone, these vehicles can positively benefit a number of ideal use cases, including:
- Staff and Visitor Transportation — just like the shuttles at an amusement park, hauling groups of people from destination to destination across a warehouse is much safer and faster with personnel carriers. Even smaller sized warehouses elect to use personnel carriers to ferry staff from central welfare areas to work zones, given the safety benefits of keeping pedestrians away from forklift routes.
- Bespoke Missions — when a pick is missed, a small order needed, an inventory check required, or a quick trip called for, personnel carriers are the ideal tool for the job. Personnel carriers are widely adaptable to all sorts of bespoke missions that naturally arise during the day, and unlike forklifts or burden carriers, can often combine multiple missions into a single trip.
- Tow Hauling — with common towing capacities ranging from 500 to over 10,000 lbs, personnel carriers can easily expand their capabilities by bringing trailers and equipment along for the ride. Standard towing applications include additional seating tram carts, flat cargo decks, battery sleds, shelf carts, trash dumpsters, maintenance tooling, janitorial and vacuum kits, and equipment dollies.
- Facility Maintenance — grounds and building maintenance is a never-ending process at material handling sites, and urgent service needs are never far off either. In both cases, personnel carriers make rapid engineering responses the norm, ensuring that systems stay operational and assets remain in good repair.
- Event Support — many warehouses host holiday and corporate events where personnel carriers are doubly beneficial, helping to haul guests and delicate goods around alike. Outside of material handling, many other event types utilize personnel carriers including live music concerts, competitive sports, farmers markets, civic gatherings, and more.
- Load Balancing — notoriously, warehouses rarely have enough forklifts or operators to absorb demand spikes – especially those that come without notice. In periods of activity surges and peak demand, personnel carriers can be utilized to help load balance pick missions and staff movement when other vehicles are tied up.
Selecting the Best Personnel Carrier for Your Warehouse Fleet
When selecting a personnel carrier, it can be challenging to narrow down what exact features and functionality would best serve a business’ needs. Beyond the basic size and cost elements, here are a few key considerations to make when picking out your next personnel carrier:
- Seating Capacity — the first choice to make when selecting a personnel carrier is how many seats it will include, typically ranging from one to eight (before adding additional tow-behind seating carts). We recommend considering this decision with a trailer in mind — if your primary goal is to move large groups of people, lean towards a multi-seat carrier; otherwise, lean towards a one- or two-seater for hauling goods around and purchase a towable trailer for incidental staff shuttling.
- Battery and Charging System — personnel carriers offer multiple charging options that generally can be broken down into two camps: forklift style charging, and onboard charging. High-capacity personnel carriers utilize forklift-style chargers, requiring an external charger that delivers higher charge rates (at a higher cost). Standard capacity personnel carriers offer onboard charging systems that can plug into any standard wall receptacle, cutting costs and simplifying deployment.
- Weather Protection — buyers can add a weather canopy, front windshield, doors, multi-wheel drive, fog lamps, internal heating and cooling, and other options to their personnel carriers that can support operations in outdoor weather. We do advise though that if your primary goal is outdoor operation, consider a combustion engine personnel carrier for higher power and reliability in all-terrain environments.
- Safety Features — different makes and models of personnel carriers offer different degrees of safety features, with the most basic models having little more than a front headlight and a piezo horn. In general, buyers should consider standard and custom safety options including a full vehicle light package, always-on warning strobe, backup alarm, emergency stop cut-off, protective bumpers, pedestrian warning sensors, operator presence sensors, weight-rated seat belts, onboard fire extinguisher, and proximity sensors (to avoid impacts in all directions).
- Advanced Controls & Telematics — just like forklifts, personnel carriers can be equipped with advanced electronic control systems and even full telematics to integrate these vehicles into their warehouse’s automated management system. While this is likely overkill for many applications, large and continuously operating businesses can benefit from the automated location tracking, mission control, operator communication, performance logging, and maintenance tracking made possible by these control packages. We especially like the functionality of limiting travel speeds by zones and coordinating traffic with other warehouse vehicles.