A supplier of wood products to the trade and public, Jehoulet Bois relies on its Toyota counterbalance trucks with Toyota SAS to handle a wide variety of heavy loads in its depots south-east of Brussels.

The company operates from two sites: the head office in Latinne and a new outlet in Manhay, covering a total area of about five hectares.

“The Manhay site allows us to better reach our customers in the Ardennes region to the south, “explains partner Philippe Jehoulet. “Between both sites we have 55 employees. I would say that about 70% of our business is with trade customers and 30% with the public, to whom we supply doors, flooring, roof tiles, and insulation, amongst other things.

  “Here at Latinne we typically receive four lorry-loads per day of wood, tiles and insulation boards. We unload the lorries and put the goods away, either block stacked in our yard in the outside racking, or inside the warehouse. We then coordinate deliveries to customers according to orders received. We sell between 5000 m3–7000 m3 of timber, plus 2000 m3–
3000 m3 of insulation panels a year. We have seven lorries for distribution in Belgium, each equipped with a crane.”

Jehoulet Bois uses a variety of forklift trucks to handle its products, many of which are, of course, particularly long and cumbersome. Due to space constraints the company has to store such loads at heights of up to six metres, which makes the job particularly challenging.

“Space is very important because of our confined sites,” Philippe Jeholet continues, “so we also look for forklifts with compact dimensions. We have chosen to use Toyota counterbalance forklifts for perhaps twenty years now. The last two that we bought are the Tonero three-ton truck models. We prefer to have more load capacity in reserve over what we generally need as there are always exceptional loads. The weight of some logs is hard to estimate so we need to know the forklifts can cope easily, especially with the six-metre lift heights, but the Tonero counterbalanced truck is more than able to cope with the challenge.

“The Toyota trucks have given us very few problems over the years and we are very happy with the after-sales care we receive. Good after-sales service for me is quick, efficient and not too expensive. We enjoy an excellent relationship with Toyota’s local representative and all this makes me want to continue to work with Toyota.

“The Toyota counterbalance forklift trucks are not overly complex and are easy to repair without truck parts being too expensive, which is very important for us. We also find them easy to operate. In fact, we buy them at the request of our drivers. We have a long experience with Toyota forklifts, not least because our drivers always request that any new forklift trucks should be Toyota. The Toyota Tonero is very durable and has the power it needs to work safely and efficiently.

“One particular forklift feature that is important to us is sideshift. When we are loading our lorries we have to pack them efficiently with a range of small and large loads. The side-shift helps the forklift operator do this without too much manoeuvring, saving a lot of time and cost.
“We have also managed to achieve a good record on damage – it’s now very rare for us.

“To sum-up, we work with Toyota because we can rely on the forklift trucks, our drivers are happy and confident operating them and their customer service means our business relationship is equally good.”