TNT Duiven and the award-winning Toyota Traigo 48

TNT is one of the world’s leading providers of express delivery services. Its site in Duiven, Netherlands is the main international road hub for the whole of Europe, with a huge 150,000-square-metre sorting space that collectively handles over 6.3 million kilograms of goods per week.

  Due to TNT Duiven’s particularly intense and crowded work environment, its forklift trucks often sustain shocks, resulting in expensive truck repairs, loss of productivity and occasional damages to goods. A Toyota customer since 1998, when TNT Duiven set about upgrading its fleet of forklifts last year, the top decision makers placed “reduce fleet damages costs and increase productivity” at the very top of their list of priorities. 

“We are very open and honest with each other,” says Harry Bruns, Corporate Manager of TNT International Road Hub, of his relationship with Toyota Material Handling Netherlands. “We talk to each other, solve problems together and learn from each other.”

A demanding environment calls for a demanding solution
After lengthy discussions to determine TNT Duiven’s evolving material handling requirements, Toyota Material Handling Netherlands developed a complete forklift fleet solution designed to meet TNT Duiven’s specific needs. Toyota’s European and Japan-based Product Planning teams also visited TNT Duiven as part of an extensive European market survey to help ensure that its new Toyota Traigo 48 electric forklift range would meet the material handling needs of European customers, including TNT.

Ralph Cox, Commercial Director at Toyota Material Handling Netherlands, who helped lead the TNT project says: “Together we looked at TNT Duiven’s material handling needs and worked out a complete solution: the brand new Toyota Traigo 48 specified to their exact requirements, fleet management with Toyota I_Site, forklift servicing, battery charging and much more.”

In April 2009, TNT Duiven took delivery of 82 brand new 1.6-ton 3-wheel Toyota Traigo 48 electric forklifts. Compact yet powerful, the Toyota Traigo 48 features a robust new chassis, wrap-around counterweight design, and a new heavy duty battery hood for added durability in intense material handling operations like TNT, where the trucks are expected to perform for a marathon 3,000 hours a year. These design improvements and attention to detail paid off when the all-new Toyota Traigo 48 received the internationally recognised iF Product Design Award in 2009.

Unique active safety system
In addition the new Toyota Traigo 48 is equipped with the Toyota System of Active Stability (SAS). The world’s only integrated active safety system for forklifts, Toyota SAS offers a host of operator friendly features designed to improve the material handling capabilities of both truck and driver, resulting in better safety and increased productivity.