Toyota Material Handling UK meets customer demand by investing £7 million into their short-term hire fleet, with a further investment of 500 trucks planned for 2014.

Toyota has increased the size of its short-term hire fleet to over 3,500 trucks to help customers who need an emergency replacement, unexpected demand, but also to support seasonal peaks.

The investment in their short-term hire fleet has significantly reduced the age of trucks available and has enabled Toyota to provide customers with greater choice and availability of the latest models. Additional trucks added to the fleet include over 120 Toyota Tonero engine-powered counterbalance forklifts and 180 Toyota Traigo electric-powered forklifts, including over 20 Toyota Traigo 80-volt forklifts launched in the UK last May.

Rachel Thomas, Rental Operations Manager for Toyota Material Handling UK said "By understanding our customers' requirements, we have increased our fleet in the areas where we have the most demand. We want to provide our customers with highest quality trucks and that is why nearly 40% of the whole fleet and 62% of the counterbalance fleet is less than 3 years old. We are also looking at how we can support specialised industries by ordering industry tailored trucks. An example of this is within the local farming industry where we have a dedicated fleet of farming spec Toyota Tonero forklifts, allowing us to provide delivery within 24 hours".

The short-term hire fleet will be managed by Toyota's dedicated short-term customer service hire team.

Thomas adds "We have also developed our customer service team, who are responsible for scheduling and managing the Toyota short-term hire fleet.

Through their shared experiences and understanding of the Toyota Way values they have developed better ways of working, implemented a Kaizen continuous improvement board to keep performance and changes visible, and as a result have been able to improve efficiency and provide great service to our customers".

Toyota believes that by investing in their short term hire fleet all customers will be able to locate the truck they need, when they need it.