Duratrack, located in Elk Grove Village IL is a manufacturer of track and trolley systems used for overhead rolling applications such as sliding doors, truck bodies, industrial curtain applications, and overhead festooning systems for cranes. Most products are fabricated from sheet or coil steel, resulting heavy loads of materials and finished parts moving through the factory.
Owner Russ Scott began looking for better solutions to his material handling needs in 2012, “We had manual pallet jacks to move our skids around or pallets around. Some of the pallets can weigh up to 4,000 lbs. and we had operators that either got strains pushing them or had a hard time and had to get somebody to help them,” he said. “We tried a Big Joe D40 powered pallet jack and it is just so easy. Basically, you just push a button and you walk backwards, forwards any direction you need to go. The people were thrilled. We started off buying one and we’ve ended up buying four.”
Another issue where Russ sought improvement was in his warehousing operations. Duratrack stores skids of components and finished product both on the floor and in 16” high racking set in narrow aisles. “We have two stand up reach forklifts. The problem with that is it’s a little bit more difficult for operators to learn to use and feel safe with, they’re more expensive and I really don’t see much of an upside,” Russ said. He turned to his dealer, Illinois Material Handling, who recommended the Big Joe PDSR reach stacker as a solution. “It’s an easy machine to learn, people feel safe using it,” Russ said. “The reach feature helps because the aisles are tight, so it makes it easy to have the forks extend out when you approach the racks. The nice thing is, it’s still stable when the forks are at the full extension. The PDSR makes us more efficient, you just walk up to it and go to the area in the shop you need to get the product and its quick and easy.” Russ purchased one PDSR in 2014, and based on its success, bought another one six months later.
Based on the overwhelming successes of the D40 and PDSR in his facility, Russ again turned to Big Joe to streamline his shipping department with the purchase of two J1 Joey Task Support Vehicles. “Very tight turn radiuses on those machines so it’s easy to maneuver. It saves an awful lot of time for the operator or shipping personnel to go up to the rack where they need the product, to rise up to 16 feet and grab the small number of parts they need, come back down and go to shipping and pack and ship it,” he said. “It makes my employees and operating environment safer to work in. It also makes it, I think, safer to maneuver because the equipment is well designed and is compact, not larger than needed.”
With specialized equipment in every department, Duratrack has fully embraced the Big Joe concept of Move, Stack and Access!
The PDSR combines the tight turning characteristics and low operating cost of a walkie straddle stacker with the flexibility of a counterbalanced truck through the use of a pantograph. This mechanism extends the loads being handled beyond the straddle legs to lift or lower products and can be retracted for compact turns. With the addition of power steering, sideshift, proportional hydraulics, and tilt, the PDSR delivers exceptional versatility and easy intuitive control.