The October I Stopped Pretending One Forklift Was Enough

The Machine That Did Everything

For seven years our warehouse had one forklift. It was older than my nephew and louder than my boss, and it did everything. It unloaded the trucks at six in the morning, moved pallets between the racks all day, and loaded the last delivery at night. We called it the Old Man, partly because of its age and partly because it groaned every time it lifted anything heavy.

I manage a small distribution warehouse in Germiston. We store and move household goods for a handful of retailers, which means that for ten months of the year life is busy but manageable, and for two months it is complete chaos. October and November are when the retailers stock up for the festive season, and suddenly every truck is full and every customer wants their order yesterday.

This year the chaos arrived early. By the second week of October we had more pallets in the yard than space on the racks, and the Old Man was working from the first shift to the last without a break.

The Morning It Stopped

On a Thursday morning the Old Man simply stopped. Halfway across the floor, with a full pallet raised, it made a sound I had never heard before and then went quiet. The driver climbed down, looked at me, and shrugged in a way that said this was now my problem.

We got the pallet down safely, thank goodness. The mechanic who usually looks after it came out that afternoon and told me it would be at least a week for parts. A week. In October. I stood in the yard watching a truck reverse in with forty pallets and felt my stomach drop.

That night I sat at my kitchen table with a cold cup of tea and admitted something I had been avoiding for years. One forklift was never enough for our peak. We had just been lucky.

Three Options and No Idea

My first instinct was panic buying. Just find a forklift, any forklift, and get it on the floor by Monday. My second instinct was to do nothing and hope the Old Man came back sooner than promised. Neither felt sensible.

My brother in law runs a workshop in Boksburg and has opinions about everything with an engine. When I phoned him, he asked me three questions that I still think about.

How long do you actually need the extra machine? How hard will it work every day? And who is going to look after it?

I did not have good answers. I had been thinking about the problem as "I need a forklift", when really there were three different problems hiding inside it. I needed something immediately for the rush. I needed a long term answer to the fact that one machine could not carry the whole year. And I needed to stop relying on luck.

Hiring for the Rush

The immediate problem was the easiest to solve once I understood it. I did not need to own a second machine for the next eight weeks. I needed one to turn up, work hard through the festive peak, and leave again in January when things calmed down.

I had always assumed hiring was expensive and complicated. It turned out to be neither. Forklift rentals can be arranged by the day, the week or the month, and the company I spoke to also offered a machine with an operator, which mattered because my second driver was on leave. They talked through the weights we lift and the height of our racking before suggesting anything, which made me trust them more than if they had just tried to sell me the biggest machine they had.

The hired forklift arrived on the Monday. By Wednesday the yard was clearing. By Friday my driver was smiling again, which in October is something of a miracle.

Thinking About the Rest of the Year

With the panic over, I could think about the longer question properly. The Old Man came back after nine days, repaired but clearly tired. My brother in law said, kindly but firmly, that it had maybe two good years left.

So I sat down with our numbers. I looked at how many hours the forklift actually ran in a normal month, and how many in the peak. I looked at what we had spent on repairs over the last three years, which was more than I had realised. And I talked honestly with my boss about what the business could afford to spend now versus spread out.

A brand new machine was the dream, but it did not fit this year's budget, and our normal months do not run a forklift hard enough to justify it yet. What made sense for us was looking at used forklifts that had been properly checked and serviced, as a second machine to share the load and eventually replace the Old Man. Something reliable for the everyday work, so that next October the hired machine would be extra help rather than a rescue.

What I Would Tell Another Warehouse Manager

I learned more in that one October week than in the seven years before it. The biggest lesson was that "do I need a forklift" is the wrong question. The right questions are how long, how hard, and who looks after it. Once I answered those three honestly, the choice between hiring, buying second hand and buying new almost made itself.

The second lesson was to plan for the busy season before it arrives. I now have a reminder in my calendar for the first week of September that says, in capital letters, "Book extra forklift." My driver laughed when he saw it on my screen. I did not.

The third lesson was more personal. I had been running the warehouse on hope and on one old machine, and calling it being careful with money. It was not careful. It was risky. Spending a little to remove the risk turned out to be the cheapest thing I did all year.

January

The hired forklift went back in the second week of January, after the post festive returns had been sorted. The yard was quiet again. The Old Man was still groaning, but it was no longer carrying everything alone, and I was no longer lying awake wondering what would happen if it stopped.

My boss asked me in our year end meeting what I wanted for next year's budget. For the first time, I had a clear answer, written down, with reasons.

The Old Man is still there, by the way. We will keep him as long as he keeps going. But he finally has company.