For the fifth time in as many years, one of Crown Equipment Corporation’s forklifts has been honored with the prestigious GOOD DESIGN™ Award. The award’s sponsor, The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, recognized the Crown GPC 3000 Series order picker for its superior operator comfort and visibility, as well as its contribution to warehouse efficiency.

“We’re honored to be recognized for our innovative product designs,” said Mike Gallagher, vice president of Crown’s Design Center. “The Crown GPC 3000 accomplished our goal of providing customers with a highly versatile picking machine for maximized productivity, ergonomic fatigue reduction and safety. The large quantity of available Work Assist® options also allows operators and managers to configure a truck to their specific needs, thereby effectively involving themselves in the last mile of the lift truck design.”

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The Crown GPC 3000, which is available in Latin America, Europe, China and Australasia, was specifically designed to meet the unique challenges of an order picking application, where up to 90 percent of an operator’s work is done off of the truck. Because nearly half of that time is spent retrieving items and placing them on the pallet, Crown developed fold-down steps to help operators more safely and easily reach items stored on the second rack level, and created an open, no-trip operator floorboard that facilitates travel from one side of the truck to the other.

When operators need to move between pick locations, they can do so seamlessly from beside the truck using its Pick Position Control™ feature, thereby eliminating the extra steps and time delays caused by entering and exiting the driver’s platform. To avoid unnecessary backtracking between a pick location and the truck, the Crown GPC 3000 provides responsive controls that make truck repositioning faster and easier.

Optional features such as scissor lifts, a platform lift, and increased lift heights provide the versatility to accommodate any application. In addition, Crown offers Work Assist® accessories to improve operator productivity and comfort.

About the GOOD DESIGN™ Awards

The GOOD DESIGN™ Awards, conferred annually by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, bestow international recognition upon the world’s most prominent designers and manufacturers for advancing new, visionary and innovative product concepts, invention and originality, and for stretching the envelope beyond what is considered basic product and consumer design.

A record number of submissions were entered for the 2008 awards by thousands of design firms and corporations. Winners include Apple Computer, Inc., BMW, Electrolux Major Appliances, Google, Herman Miller, Microsoft Corporation, Whirlpool Corporation, and hundreds of other leading companies synonymous with GOOD DESIGN.

About Crown Equipment Corporation

Crown is the number one brand of electric lift trucks in the United States and the seventh largest lift truck manufacturer in the world. Crown’s award-winning line of lift trucks has earned a reputation for exceptional product design, engineering and manufacturing. From the smallest hand pallet truck to the highest lifting turret truck, Crown seeks to provide users with safe, efficient and ergonomic lift trucks that lower total cost of ownership and maximize uptime. Headquartered in New Bremen, Ohio, Crown manufactures lift trucks that are sold throughout the world.