The Top 4 Reasons to Track Forklift Hour Meter Readings…Accurately

Issues with tracking forklift hour meter readings has been around for years. If you are in the market to purchase a used forklift, a maintenance professional managing a fleet of forklift trucks or a distributor that maintains a fleet of rental forklift trucks, you know that tracking forklift hour meter readings is an important and constant problem. Let’s discuss each one of these topics…and solution to the age-old issue.

What is Tracking Forklift Hour Meter Readings?

Tracking forklift hour meter readings reports the usage compared to the age of the forklift, fuel consumption and when the lift truck needs to be maintained. This is the best way to track the life of the forklift; meaning is it time to sell it, recycle it or keep on using it.

Reason #1  Selling the Forklift

If you are purchasing or selling a forklift, there are some basic understandings you need to know for tracking forklift hour meter readings. This way you can advertise correctly or know what you are purchasing. 

Most forklifts trucks have a 60-minute meter with either a 4 digit or 5 digit reader. If you don’t know already, this part can be tricky. Let’s say you own a forklift truck with a 4-digit meter reader. You’ve gotten a lot of use from your forklift truck. So much use that you have accumulated 9,999 hours of operation. Over the past month, you put on another 3,000 hours onto the forklift. Now the forklift reads 2,999 hours. This can be misleading if you’re a buyer or a seller of the forklift. 

According to AgTalk, a buying and selling equipment board, this issue was addressed. It certainly wasn’t recent, the post was back in 2016, which stresses the point that nothing had been done about this problem. A buyer thought he purchased a forklift with 6,500 forking hours on it. Instead, it was really 16,500 hours. A bit of a difference.

Reason #2  Forklift Rentals

This is a special one for forklift distributors. Forklift distributors need to know the meter reading for their rental customers. When distributors send out a forklift to be used, they generally take the reading and document it within their system. Once the company is done using the forklift and returned to the distributor, the forklift hour meter reading needs to be done again.

Why? In many cases, companies are renting the forklift for a day, week or month. They are purchasing a set of hours for the forklift use. If the forklift comes back with let’s say 2,000 hours over what was agreed upon, the company needs to be charged for the overage. Is that happening today? Not as much as you think. Distributors are losing money on the rental.

Reason #3  Fuel Consumption

Tracking forklift hour meter readings for fuel consumption is a great exercise to know how the forklift operator is treating the forklift. Meaning, are they ‘gunning’ the engine? Leaving the forklift to run for long(er) periods of time? It’s something to consider.

Reason #4  Maintenance

In order to maximize the life of the forklift, it needs regular maintenance. Whether you own engine-powered forklifts, electric powered forklifts or a combination of the two, the rule of thumb is to conduct regular maintenance after 250 hours, 500 hours and a major maintenance overhaul after 2,000 hours.

What’s Next?

Now that we’ve gone over the Top 4 Reasons to Track Forklift Hour Meter Readings…Accurately, it’s time to find out what you can use. The S2 Digital Checklist with Impact Monitoring has forklift meter reading included in the safety solution. You have enough digital spaces to ensure accuracy of the reading, so there’s no math involved. If it’s 25,000 hours, then that’s what it’ll say. Now the seller, buyer, maintenance manager and forklift distributor can all read the same number.

In addition, meter reading can be a regular part of your digital OSHA compliance inspection on your forklift. As the forklift operator signs in with a PIN or badge, they can enter in the hour meter reading, then proceed with the digital checklist. It’s as quick and simple. All the information is stored in the Dashboard. Perfect, it’s accessible and trackable.

Let’s get this multi-year problem put in the past by accurately tracking forklift hour meter readings with the SIERA.AI S2.