Safety is a key concern for all warehouse safety managers, whether considering legal safety requirements, enforcing a health and safety culture, or evaluating existing safety practices, procedures, and facilities. Ensuring the safety of employees, consumers, and the environment is at the core of your responsibilities.

The Occupational Health and Safety Act applies not only to warehouse safety protocols but also to your warehouse equipment safety standards. The safety of your warehouse equipment, especially your forklift fleet, affects not only the safety of your warehouse environment and employees but also its performance, productivity, and profitability.

Toyota Material Handling, known to be at the forefront of innovation within the material handling industry and a leading warehouse equipment supplier improved its electric Toyota Forklift 8FBE series. This article discusses these improvements and how safety is truly at the fingertips of its operators and your warehouse management teams.

Review of the new and improved Toyota Forklift 8FBE Series, an electric-powered 1.0 to 2.0 Ton Forklift

The Toyota 8FBE Series is a versatile electric powered 1.0 to 2.0 Ton forklift. Its small design offers remarkable turning performance, excellent stability, and operability for narrow worksites to carry out varied material handling activities. Brought to you by Toyota Material Handling, the leading warehouse equipment supplier in South Africa, the Toyota 8FBE series is the ultimate electric forklift with new features for sustainable working environments and improving ease of use, safety, and productivity in your warehouse.

Safety at your fingertips

The new and improved Toyota 8FBE Series comes with unique and optional add-on operator assist features. Designed with integrated technology to support the optimisation of safety measures for the forklift, its operator, and nearby pedestrian employees. These technologies include:

• SASE, Toyota’s unique operator assist System of Active Stability helps prevent load spills and tip-overs by automatically adjusting the mast tilt speed and angle to match the lift height and load weight. The system also provides automatic fork-leveling control to improve stability by stopping the forks at a level position making it easier to operate and thus improving productivity.
• The OPS, Operator Presence Sensing, support system helps the operator avoid unintentional accidents when not in the forklift using features such as the load handling OPS function, Travel OPS function, and OPS Active notifications. If the operator is not in their normal operating position the OPS stops load handling operations, interrupts travel power, and sounds a buzzer and activates the OPS indicator lamp to inform the operator the OPS is going to be activated.
• As an optional add on safety feature, the Toyota 8FBE offers The SEnS⁺ a stereo camera, designed exclusively for the detection of pedestrians and other obstacles within the operation range and controls the travelling speed of the forklift.

These innovative technologies automate safety ensuring employees, the operator and merchandise are optimally safeguarded in the event of human error.

Additional add-on features for improved safety include:

The new Toyota 8FBE is powered with innovative safety technology improving safety, efficiency, productivity, and profitability. The 8FBE series is built for sustainable working environments and increases the ease of use for electric-powered forklifts. Features such as the Auto Power-off Function and the Key-off Light-off function.

The auto power-off function supports energy saving by automatically switching off the forklift power after the driver leaves for a certain period. The Key-off Light-off function limits needless electric power consumption by automatically turning off the lights when the key is off.

A key feature of the Toyota 8FBE is its compact size which allows for a minimum turning radius of 1 515mm[1]. To ensure the same reliability and durability when lifting the 3 Wheel 8FBE series forklifts are filled with double rear tires allowing the same lateral stability as 4-wheel forklifts when travelling, turning, and at high mass height operation.

Improved Reliability and Durability

With all these benefits the improved Toyota 8FBE series also includes the best-in-class operations time with motors, and motor-drivers designed to minimize the energy loss and heat generation from the forklift. Long operating times using the battery exchange options contribute to minimising downtime. Batteries with fork pockets can be extracted using a forklift, otherwise, the battery can be removed by sliding it out.