Don’t you hate it when there’s the one load that your forklift just can’t lift or hold at height?

You need your forklift operating at it’s best – and when it does let you down, it’s always at the worst possible time. Your machinery operators quickly become de-motivated when the equipment starts to let them down, and they get sick of topping up the hydraulic oil. . It affects everyone’s motivation and morale.

If your forklft pup is down on flow or pressure, or your mast cylinders leaking or creeping, the operator will often have to overcome this by using the machine in a way that is not healthy. will only do more harm. No doubt you’ve seen Operators over revving or jerking the lever to get the job done. Apart from being unsafe, this misuse will only do more harm as the forklift is put under unnecessary stress.

The costs can be huge, hydraulic repairs or new componets are certainly not cheap. Not to mention the inconvenience of having your Lifter out of action, and having to hire one whilst yours is being fixed. Then there’s the ongoing small regular costs of topping up oil to keep up with an external leak, or excess fuel consumption needed to compensate for poor hydraulic performance. Depending on the size of your machine, the costs could be anywhere between $5k-$30k/year.

So what causes this?
Poor performing forklifts are generally due to two reasons:

• Leaking mast cylinders

• Tired and worn out pump

Your hydraulic cylinder leaking oil externally from the rod seals is normally easy to identify. However it’s the hidden, internal leaks that are both hard to see, and the most damaging.

If there’s no oil leakage, then it’s likely that your pump is worn out and not providing the system pressure required to get full lifting capacity from your forklift.

Then of course there’s the possibility that it’s being caused by dirty oil, which either comes from an ingress of fine contamination from the leaking cylinder rod seals or from incorrect filling/storage practice of top-up oil.

In 2021 we had a customer spend $32,000 on servicing 2 large cylinders that had clearly been leaking from the main rod seal. Over a long period of time the fine contamination in the fluid had scored the chrome rods resulting in further ingress of small particles creating a bigger problem. This got to the point where they were needing to top up with 20Litres of new oil each week! This $32k repair bill would have been easily avoided with regular hydraulic servicing. We now do quarterly servicing of the hydraulic cylinders on their forklifts which only costs a few hundred dollars every 3 months.

Flotek are the experts at getting your forklifts lifting like they used to. If your forklifts are not getting it up, give Flotek a call – as our whole mantra is to give you more Up Time! We have serviced thousands of forklift hydraulic cylinders, and can normally have one of our hydraulics technicians out within 48 hours anywhere in greater Melbourne to get your machines lifting like they used to. It may save your business thousands of dollars in machine downtime in 2023.

Flotek also offers Scheduled Inspection Programs, which has a Flotek Technician on your site every 3 months to ensure your forklifts are always lifting at 100%. Call 9397 0044