As the market for rough terrain lift trucks has emerged so has the requirement for straight mast lift trucks. Their emergence and demand has leveled over the last ten years because of the explosion of telescopic handlers. Presently, lift truck makers are focusing their product development on the lift truck's core function.
For example, units that offer a lift capacity of less than 6000 pounds on average are up to 2.45% to a bit more than $46,000. Other machinery within the category's bulk class varying from 6000 pounds to 10,000 pounds in capacity are up 3.15% to $54,177. Machine buyers will quickly point out only if their actual expenses are up ever so slightly.
With models that rely upon diesel fuel, hourly costs in those 2 classes have risen 81.6% and 84.3% respectively. Even if the prices on the dealer's tag might not seem all that different, when the machinery has left the sales yard and enters the customer's work space, it has to produce on a large scale.
Over the last 10 years, the rough terrain lift truck market has waned due to the increase in telescopic-handler purchases. The telescopic handlers are might just be the future that this particular kind of machine is evolving to. The telehandler's job is placing a load with a long reach. The rough-terrain lift truck remains the heavyweight champ when it comes to pure grunt lifting.
The company Omega produces lots of different lines of lift equipment and a complete array of rough-terrain lift trucks. The Mega Series is an established line which consist of of larger vertical-mast units. These units offer lifting capacities varying from 8000 pounds all the way up to 20,000 pounds. The next step was to allow lifting capacities up to 50,000 pound and the HERC Series was made to do this task. The more complex and bigger equipment required, the more specialized that OEMs such as Omega become.