LINDE Lifts Dismantled Machines

About Linde

Linde (pronounced “Linda”) Material Handling’s roots date back to 1904 in Munich, Germany, but its tale in the modern lift industry begins half a century later. In 1955 it developed the Güldner Hydrocar transport truck with hydrostatic drive. This led to 1959’s Hubtrac diesel hydrostatic mast forklift, now credited as “the ancestor of all Linde forklift trucks.” The 2.2-ton (2-metric-ton) Hubtrac debuted at the 1960 Hanover Fair, setting the company on a path to becoming one of the world’s biggest warehouse equipment and forklift manufacturers.

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2018 Linde HT30T

The Hubtrac’s replacement, the 314, arrived in 1968, and Linde showcased its first electric forklift truck at the Hanover Fair in 1971. The company bought Baker Material Handling Corporation, a United States-based industrial truck manufacturer, in 1977, and then purchased Fenwick, France’s largest forklift manufacturer, in 1984. The following year saw the premiere of the 351 diesel fork, which according to Linde would become “the most successful truck in Europe” over the next decade and a half.

In 1989, Linde acquired the UK-based inventor of the reach truck, the Lansing Bagnall company. A 1993 joint venture with Xiamen Forklift Trucks, then China’s second-largest forklift truck manufacturer, eventually won the German company a massive share of the Chinese lift market. In 2006 Linde became part of the KION Group, which it describes as “the world's second-largest manufacturer of industrial trucks and one of the leading suppliers of automation solutions for intralogistics.”

Linde presented hybrid and fuel cell prototypes three years later, with the latter type of truck becoming a standard offering from the firm in 2010. Automated industrial trucks from the company, the L-MATIC L HP high-platform truck and P-MATIC tractor, showed up in 2015. A year later, Roadster versions of Linde E20 to E35 series electric forklifts gave drivers remarkable visibility, as their overhead tilt cylinders obviated the need for traditional A-pillars.

Linde Innovations

Apart from its MATIC automated forklift trucks, Linde has developed other technologies for safety, sustainability, and comfort. Hydrogen fuel cell energy is one of these. Linde Load Management Advanced, a color-coded display with load weight sensing and safe operating parameters guidance, is another. 2014 saw the debut of the Linde Safety Pilot, an electronic assistance system to help the driver steer clear of hazards.

The Linde Safety Guard system, acquired along with the startup company Comnovo in 2017, uses wireless transmitters to alert operators to other trucks and pedestrians approaching around corners, and from which direction. TruckSpot and BlueSpot lamps project light onto the floor ahead of a lift’s rearward or forward path to alert pedestrians. In turn, vibrational feedback can signal potential hazards to lift operators. Rotating cabs and operator work stations help the driver reverse a forklift safely without having to turn the head and flex the spine; Linde notes that driver comfort benefits productivity.

Linde Today

Today, Linde employs about 13,000 people and has more than 700 sales and service locations in more than 100 countries. It has factories in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, the U.S., and China.

Linde manufactures a tremendous variety of lifts, claiming 77 product series with up to 382 model variants total, as well as approximately 10,000 equipment options. Among these are, of course, electric mast forklift trucks and hydrostatic IC (internal combustion) forks with cushion or pneumatic tires. They currently range in lifting capacity from 2,600 to 40,000 pounds (1,200 to 18,000 kilograms).

The company also makes pallet jacks, walkie stackers, reach trucks, warehouse trucks, VNA (very narrow aisle) trucks, order pickers, tow tractors, platform trucks, swing reach trucks, container handlers, logistic trains, MATIC automated forklift trucks, and explosion-proof trucks.

Popular Linde models on the used market include H25, H30, H35, H40, H45, and H50 forklifts with either pneumatic or cushion tires. Used pricing for Linde fork lift trucks varies from approximately $2,000 to more than $200,000 for a few heavy-capacity examples. Model years date from brand-new units all the way back to the mid-1980s on the used market.

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