If you’ve decided to get a forklift to meet your material handling needs in your warehouse operations, congratulations, you’ve taken a step in the right direction! Investing in the right type of truck can greatly elevate your operations, giving you better efficiency and safety. A stand-up lift is often used in warehouses with special requirements—and with good reason. Read on to find out more about these versatile types of forklifts and how they can be a perfect fit for your business.  

What is a Stand-Up Forklift? 

Stand-up forklifts, also known as electric riders, are designed in a way that allows operators to use them while standing in a sideway stance. They are powered by batteries and not by internal combustion. However, what’s really important about electric riders is their compact and shorter design that gives them a tighter turning radius and greater maneuverability. These features allow them to excel in environments with tight aisles, high-density storage, and small, challenging spaces. 

What-is-stand-up-forklift

Key Benefits of Stand-Up Forklifts 

Key benefits a stand-up forklift can bring to your warehouse include:  

☑️Space Efficiency 

Electric riders can maneuver aisles as small as 8 to 10 feet, allowing you to have more racking that’s dedicated to storage in your layout. You can often free up to as much as 25% of space in your warehouse with narrow racks compared to a conventional racking layout. And since a reach stand-up’s forks can reach material at greater depths, you can set up 1-2 pallet rack locations behind the other. These capabilities allow you to greatly expand your surface area dedicated to storage.  

☑️Enhanced Visibility for Operators 

Sit-down lifts only have forward-facing visibility and operators must twist around and look over their shoulder when backing up. The sideways stance of the forklift operator in a stand-up truck ensures there is a 360° range of visibility, no matter which way the vehicle is headed. This design improves safety and reduces accidents, even in high traffic areas.  

☑️Faster Entry and Exit 

Getting on and off a sit-down lift can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Fortunately, electric riders have a design for faster entry and exit, making it a better choice for operations that require frequent stops and loading and unloading small quantities of different items. These aspects make them not only a popular choice for warehousing, but also for grocery chains, manufacturing, and food and beverage distributors.   

☑️Superior Maneuverability 

Stand-up trucks are extremely maneuverable because of their compact design and tighter turning radius. For example, their tighter turning radius gives it easy access to smaller spaces in tall racks and narrow aisles.   

☑️Operator Comfort and Ergonomics 

A stand-up lift is designed to maximize operator comfort and minimize fatigue, which is especially helpful for short or medium-duration tasks. Features such as adjustable and intuitive controls, enhanced visibility, and the sideways stance of a stand-up truck reduce fatigue by reducing muscle strain, improving awareness, and lessening physical demand.  

Comparing Stand-Up Forklifts to Other Forklift Types 

To help you make a more informed decision, this section contains a quick comparison of stand-up forklifts, sit-down forklifts, and walkie stackers.  

Design Differences 

  • Sit-Down Forklift: These trucks are designed for the operator to drive while seated. They have a heavy weight in its rear that balances the load it carries in front.  
  • Walkie Stacker: A walkie stacker is a smaller capacity walk-behind pallet truck, and its mast lifts pallets to their storage location. There are ride-on walkie stackers, but they require an operator license to drive them. They are built for projects with shorter duration and usually as a backup to forklifts.  
  • Stand-up Forklift: Stand-up forklifts have a design that allows the forklift operator to “stand” on a platform in a sideway stance while driving them. In contrast to the sit-down forklift, the battery offsets the load on a stand-up lift.  

Operational Environments 

  • Ideal Settings for a Sit-Down Forklift: These trucks are mostly used indoors but can also be designed rugged enough for outdoor terrains. They are useful for anything from basic indoor warehouse use to outside construction and agricultural use.  
  • Ideal Settings for Walkie Stackers: Walkie stackers are mainly used inside for low to mid-level selective racking environments, such as storerooms, small warehouses or customer zone racking areas. 
  • Ideal Settings for Stand-up Forklifts: These trucks are mainly used in a wide range of industries with environments that have tight aisles, high-density storage, and small, challenging spaces.  

Safety Features Comparison 

  • Sit-Down Forklift Safety Features: Basic safety features on sit-down lifts that help prevent accidents include fork positioners, seat belts, overhead guards, and brakes. 
  • Walkie Stacker Safety Features: Includes safety features like an emergency stop, stability features, and a backup alarm. They are also a great deal slower and lighter than ride-on fork trucks, making them safer to use around pedestrians. 
  • Stand-up Forklift Safety Features: Warning lights, travel alarms, rear guard posts, overhead guards, enhanced visibility, and a safety cage that encircles the lift driver’s seat all work to keep operators safe while moving and carrying heavy loads on an electric rider. 

Lifting and Height Capacities 

  • Sit-Down Forklift: These trucks can lift 3,000 to 100,000 lb. capacity or more and can lift loads up to 15 feet high.  
  • Walkie Stackers: Operators can move and lift material up to 4,000 lbs. and up to 15 feet with a walkie stacker.  
  • Stand-up Forklift: Stand-ups have lifting capacities between 2,000 and 5,500 lbs. They can lift loads to approximately 20 feet. 

Retrieval Method 

  • Sit-down Forklift: With this type of truck, the operator drives up close to the material, levels the forks underneath it, and then drives far enough into it to place the forks underneath the load. With the load stabilized, the truck lifts the load, and then backs away to remove the material from storage  
  • Walkie Stacker: Legs of the walkie stacker are used to help distribute the weight of a load. They straddle a pallet, so that the stacker can drive up closer to a pallet without requiring as much space.  
  • Stand-up Forklift: a stand-up reach forklift has a special mechanism known as a pantograph that extends forks horizontally into racking to grab and retrieve loads. That is why they are often called “reach trucks.”  

Aisle Width Types 

  • Wide Aisles: Also known as standard aisles, they measure 12 to 13 feet wide. Wide aisles are typically handled with counterbalanced forklifts, although other types of material handling equipment can be used.  
  • Narrow Aisles: These measure 8 to 10 feet wide. Stand-up lifts handle this type of rack the best.  
  • Very Narrow Aisles: These aisles measure 6-feet wide or less and require very narrow forklifts to navigate them. 

Where Stand-up Forklifts Outperform Others 

Stand-up forklifts excel in situations requiring frequent stops and starts, tight maneuvering in narrow aisles of 8 to 10 feet, and quick operator entry and exit. Since counterbalance lifts need 12 to13 feet aisle width, they are not suitable for the scenario described here. On the other hand, walkie stackers can maneuver narrow aisles, but they are made for more lightweight duties and will not be suitable for loads exceeding 4,000 pounds.   

Clark’s Stand-Up Forklift Innovations

If you have a narrow aisle warehouse, your aisle space needs are a premium. Enter CLARK’s electric 15D/17/20/22 NPX series, four narrow aisle reach trucks with a narrow footprint, tight turning radius, and tall reach height, allowing you to maximize your warehouse space.  State-of-the art features on the NPX series that set it apart include:   

  • Load capacity range of 3,000 to 4,500 lbs. 
  • Travel speeds up to 7.5 MPH (loaded) 7.5 MPH (unloaded) 
  • Turning radius up to 69.7 inches. 
  • Maximum fork height of 20 feet, more with customization. 

Tips for Choosing the Right Stand-Up Forklift

To choose the right stand-up forklift it’s important to assess your warehouse’s size, layout, and operational needs. That’s no small feat, but a CLARK dealer can perform a site visit and work closely with you and your personnel to select a truck that fits your needs. Who knows? After a site visit and discussion with CLARK, you may find you need a different material handling solution like a CLARK walkie stacker or sit-down forklift. 

The Importance of Training and Regular Maintenance 

To protect your investment, the importance of training and regular maintenance can’t be understated. Training and regular maintenance of your material handling equipment is part of forklift certification and ensures operator safety and optimal performance.

CLARK can work with you to develop a maintenance plan to protect your investment. Additionally, we offer a full range of products, services, and publications on our website to help you improve material handling safety in your operations. 

Optimize Your Warehouse with CLARK Material Handling Equipment 

This post gives you an excellent overview of factors to consider when buying a stand-up forklift such as applications, environment, product type, maximum capacity, and most common maximum fork/lifting heights. However, when purchasing one, it’s a big decision, as there are so many factors to consider for your warehouse. More importantly, you can leave money on the table if you don’t choose the right kind of forklift for your warehouse. 

CLARK, the inventor of the sit-down forklift, has been providing high-quality material handling equipment to businesses since 1917. We over-engineer to deliver best-in-class durability, serviceability, and uptime. So, if you are looking to optimize your storage requirements and reap the key benefits that our material handling equipment brings, contact your knowledgeable CLARK dealer today for a quote.