5 Best Material Handling Equipment

The material handling equipment sector encompasses a diverse range of tools, vehicles, appliances and accessories that are used at a construction site. We take a look at the five main types…

The economic growth and increased spending on infrastructural and construction activities has played a huge part in providing the necessary boost to the Material Handling Equipment (MHE) sector. As the name suggests, the material handling industry majorly deals with equipment that help in movement, control and protection of materials, goods and products at the construction site and other places. This makes the MHE sector, a critical intermediary in the economy of the country.

Types of material handling equipment

The MHE sector encompasses a diverse range of tools, vehicles, appliances and accessories. However, the 5 main types of material handling equipment that one can spot at any construction site generally include backhoe loaders, cranes, forklifts, dump trucks and front loaders.

• Backhoe loaders: They are excellent engineering and excavation vehicles that consist of a tractor, front shovel and bucket and a small backhoe in the rear end. Backhoe loaders are commonly used for transportation of building materials at any construction site.

• Cranes: They represent another family of material handling equipment that are common on many construction job sites. They are used for lifting and placing things like heavy steel beams, pre-stressed concrete sections for buildings, materials and supplies to the upper stories of a high-rise and a host of other essential jobsite material handling tasks. The various types of cranes include all terrain cranes, rough terrain cranes, truck mounted cranes and lattice boom cranes.

• Forklifts: Often called forklift trucks, they are powerful industrial trucks that are used to lift and transport material by steel forks that are inserted under the load at the construction sites. Generally, forklifts are used to move loads and equipment that is stored on pallets. The most common type of design with forklifts is the counter balance and others include the reach truck and side loader.

• Dump trucks: Commonly known as production trucks, these are used for transporting loose material such as sand, dirt and gravel for construction. The typical dump truck is equipped with a hydraulically operated open-box bed hinged at the rear, with the front being able to be lifted up to allow the contents to fall out on the ground. They are of different types like standard dump truck, transfer dump truck, semi-trailer end dump truck, semi-trailer bottom dump truck, double and triple trailer, side dump trucks and off-road dump trucks and come in different configurations with each one specified to accomplish a specific task in the construction chain.

• Front loaders: Also known as front end loaders, bucket loaders, scoop loaders, the front loaders are kind of tractors that are normally wheeled and use a wide square tilting bucket on the end of movable arms to lift and move material around at the construction site. The loader assembly may be a removable attachment or permanently mounted on the vehicle.

In a nutshell, each different type of MHE has a huge variety of different specifications and as such the whole universe of MHE employed at a construction site is quite big.