Freight forwarder Davies Turner turned to Linde when it needed a ruck with a lift height of over 16 meters
Davies Turner chose Linde Material Handling when it needed some high-reach very narrow aisle trucks for its newly expanded hub in Bristol.
Davies Turner is a family-owned international freight forwarding company, based in the United Kingdom with sales of some £135 million. It has depots at Dartford, Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, Bridgend, and an Irish subsidiary headquartered in Dublin.
To enable pallet retrieval from this location, Davies Turner needed a truck with a substantial lift height capability of over 16m.
The hub is made up of two warehouses and now occupies 21,000 sqm and employs more than 100 staff. The premises where the Linde equipment operates comprises nearly 15,000 sqm of storage and houses 8,000 pallet locations in the high bay racking plus four mezzanine floors for pick/pack and order-sorting. To maximise the use of floor space, the warehouse is racked to the eaves and mezzanines are built above the ground floor dispatch area.
Davies Turner director Roger Lucy said: “The Linde trucks we chose lift three quarters of a metre higher than any other current model. They were the only intralogistics company who could meet our requirements at this point in time.”
Linde installed three K range very narrow aisle trucks with lift heights exceeding those of any application on record. The trucks can lift loads of 1,000kg to the maximum height and work in aisles of only 2080 mm wide.
Pick and deposit stations are situated on each mezzanine level allowing the trucks to place loads on, and retrieve them from, the mezzanine. Other features include synchronised reach and rotate allowing trucks to handle loads on either side of the working aisle, without the truck needing to exit the aisle to re-orientate the forks. The trucks use inductive wire guidance in the aisle and are able to lift and travel simultaneously enabling fast operation and maximising valuable time.
The Linde K man-up very narrow aisle trucks were originally considered because of their suitability for this type of application. The trucks are of modular design, where major components and truck systems are chosen to exactly match the application.
Lucy says: “Linde was able to meet the specific requirements that we had in Avonmouth. It helped us gain maximum benefit from our new building and I am very pleased with the final outcome.”
