Capitol Materials, Inc., a GMS Company, serves both commercial and residential customers and offers the largest inventory of construction supplies in the southern United States.
The company was founded in 1969 with just one location in downtown Atlanta. Today, they have 19 conveniently located yards across the south including five in Alabama, 12 in Georgia and two in Florida. Their vast product inventory and emphasis on the customer experience have allowed them to achieve their goal of becoming the region’s most complete drywall supply company.
Recently at one of the company’s Atlanta locations, they began the process of switching from diesel forklifts to electric. In a given day, this location serves 100-200 customers using a multi-shift business model to meet demand.
“We decided to use electric forklifts because the reduced fuel cost, the reduced maintenance and less emissions,” said Jamie Walker, assistant manager.
Capitol Materials chose the Linde Series 387—an electric counterbalanced forklift powered by an 80V battery with a capacity range of 4,500-7,000 lbs.
Linde is the only manufacturer that will offer two different chassis versions—low and high. Furthermore the high chassis comes in two varieties— compact and long. This allows users to tailor the machine to meet their exact needs.
The low chassis configuration is suitable for all applications that don’t require as long of run time from the battery, it also provides a lower entry point for the operator and a lower overall height; the high chassis allows for a larger capacity battery and a smaller turning radius for work in tight areas; the high and long provides even longer runtimes and superior capacity retention.
In addition to being beneficial to the company’s bottom line, Linde electric forklifts are operator friendly. Designed based on the principle that a healthy operator is a productive operator, a “floating cab” with neoprene bushings and bearings reduce the vibrations felt at the driver’s contact points with the forklift, keeping fatigue to a minimum.
“The specific features we like in our Linde products is the ease of use, the comfortability, the ergonomic design of the hand controls,” said Walker. “They’re just durable products that we can count on.”
Has your company benefited from using a Linde forklift? We’d love to hear about it. Submit your photos of our trucks at work to marketing.na(at)kiongroup.com
