Streamlining On-Site Forklift Battery Service for Dealers

If you rent forklift batteries, you probably prefer to handle maintenance yourself. Reliable forklift batteries keep customers coming back — and regular service is essential for battery health. Besides, those batteries aren’t just sources of motive power. They’re also core business assets. Protecting them is also protecting your bottom line.

But for many forklift battery dealers, service can be tricky. It often involves picking up batteries, hauling them back to your facility, and then returning them when they’re ready for use. Customers have to keep their operations running in the meantime, so you can’t grab all the batteries at once. You have to stagger service, which can be time-intensive on your end, and frustrating for the customer who simply wants more forklifts in the aisles.

On-site forklift battery service offers a simple solution. Rather than bringing batteries to your service equipment, you bring equipment to the customer’s facility. Servicing batteries on-site is quicker and less disruptive to your customers. But how do you get battery service infrastructure from your facility to the customer’s?

That’s where the BHS collection of mobile battery service equipment can help. Here’s how.

Choosing Equipment for On-Site Forklift Battery Maintenance

Depending on how often your set battery service schedules, your technicians may conduct any number of battery maintenance tasks, including:

• Inspecting batteries for signs of corrosion or damage
• Watering battery cells
• Removing electrolyte build-up from terminals and cases
• Measuring electrolyte specific gravity, and performing equalization charges if necessary
• Deep cleaning, including wastewater reclamation and disposal

Needless to say, these tasks require specialized equipment — and not all of it is portable by design. In order to complete many of these tasks, technicians need 360-degree access to the battery. Battery stand systems designed for day-to-day storage don’t provide that access.

Battery Service Stands from BHS do. These steel, powder-coated units simplify battery transfer with a poly-sleeved roller bed (and solid decking is available for Gantry Crane battery systems, for those forklift fleets that require vertical, rather than horizontal, battery extraction). But the question remains: What’s the best way to carry a Battery Service Stand from your facility to the customer’s?

Mobile Battery Service Stations from BHS, Inc.

The Knock-Down Adjustable Battery Service Stand from BHS was designed to streamline this task. It’s just as robust as the original models, but it separates into three sections to allow a single technician to move the unit without assistance. There’s no need to coordinate dock access and have a forklift available to move the service stand. The heaviest section, the frame, includes a dolly handle and casters for one-person transportation.

Simply load a Knock-Down Adjustable Battery Service Stand onto your truck, head to the customer’s facility, and set up your on-site service station. Adjustable legs allow for easy height adjustment to service batteries out of multiple trucks with varying compartment heights.

On-Site Battery Washes, Including Wastewater Management

You can (and should) wipe down forklift batteries with a neutralizing agent at least weekly. (The BHS Equipment Cleaning Kit has everything you need for casual washes.) Every few months, however, you’ll also need to wash forklift batteries deeply—and because the water used to clean batteries contains hazardous materials, you’ll need to follow local and federal regulatory practices in containing and treating that water.

Battery Wash Cabinets from BHS were built to automate this process. These self-enclosed units clean, rinse, and dry forklift batteries while containing runoff for treatment, often through a Recirculation & Neutralization System or a full-service Wastewater Recycling System. With the Mobile Battery Wash Cabinet Kit (BWC-1-M-DD-120-KIT), you can achieve the same deep cleaning at your customer’s facility, in perfect compliance with haz-mat regulations.

The Battery Wash Cabinet Kit consists of three units:

• A Battery Wash Cabinet model BWC-1-M-DD
• A 120-gallon (454-liter) clean water tank, complete with Wash Pump and Auxiliary Hand Spray Wand
• A 120-gallon (454-liter) wastewater collection tank

Both water tanks are mounted on stainless steel carts, and the BWC features fork pockets for transportation via lift truck or pallet jack. These features make the entire Kit portable for on-site battery washes. You can place the BWC at a convenient location in your customer’s facility, or permanently affix it to a service truck for even quicker work.

Water tanks connect with the BWC via cam-and-groove quick connects, and the wastewater collection unit seals for safe, compliant transportation back to your facility. Mobile solutions like Battery Wash Cabinet Kits and Mobile Battery Service Stands allow you to maintain rented batteries in the field, improving customer satisfaction and overall operational efficiency to achieve a quick ROI.

To learn more about battery service equipment from BHS, Inc., contact our Sales Team at 1.800.BHS.9500 today.