Picking Up

Waving long feelers, scores of buglike vehicles scooted about Chicago's huge International Amphitheater. Like cocky midgets showing off giants' muscles, they hoisted enormous loads, effortlessly shuttled them about, gently set them down. The machines' exhibitors, the infant U.S. materials-handling industry, had a right to be cocky. They have changed the face of U.S. business.

The forklift truck, major instrument of the change, is at least 32 years old. But it was not until World War II, when the U.S. Navy used forklift trucks to perform prodigious feats of loading & unloading battle cargo, that U.S. industry woke up to the fact that it had been squandering its manpower by doing most of its lifting by hand. It was paying $9 billion a year, roughly one-fourth of the total U.S. factory payroll, just to pick things up and set them down.

To help do this better and quicker, the materials-handling makers last week displayed hundreds of their latest products ranging from cranes and monorail conveyors to the ubiquitous forklift trucks which are already creating their own folklore. They can raise heavy loads (up to 40 tons) up an elevatorlike track, and stack them as high as 15 ft. above the floor Some of the new trucks came equipped with interchangeable accessories--forks for lifting boxes, steel fingers for grabbing big rolls, e.g., newsprint. One model boasted a two-way radio, by which its driver could be directed to any corner of a plant.

Thanks to such gadgets, the gross of the materials-handling equipment industry has grown from $250 million in 1948 to $1 billion in 1950. Sales are expected to exceed $2.5 billion this year. The biggest equipment-maker, Michigan's Clark Equipment Co., shot from $18 million sales in 1940 to $68 million last year, expects to beat $100 million in 1951. The runner-up, Yale & Towne (1950 sales: $65 million),has doubled production of materials-handling trucks since last June, expects to double it again within a year. Said Yale & Towne's Vice President Elmer F. Twyman: if all U.S. industry modernized its materials-handling, at least 1,000,000 men could be freed for new jobs or the armed forces, and production could be increased at least 10% without any new plants. Some prize examples of modernization:

P: RCA's Indianapolis plant cut its space from 6,400 sq. ft. to 3,600 sq. ft., nevertheless managed to increase the volume of goods handled from 36 million lbs. to 97 million lbs. by installing fork lifts, hydraulic jacks and portable conveyor units, while trimming its receiving department from eleven men to eight.

P: Ford Motor Co. recently spent $50,000 for fork trucks, tractors and trailers in a new plant, saved $160,000 in handling costs the first year alone.

P: Cleveland's Ferro Machine & Foundry cut the cost of loading a truckload of castings from $20 to $1.88.

P: Cleveland's Lincoln Electric Co. (arc welding) is building a new $8,500,000 plant with two miles of overhead "railroad," eliminating all manual handling of material. In mockup tests, President James F. Lincoln has found a saving of 10% in direct labor costs.

Materials-handling improvements have the support of unions, because they usually step up business enough so that there are more jobs all around. They also transform common laborers into semiskilled operators, and trim industrial accidents, 70% of which arise from materials-handling.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.