Pallet Trucks – Buy new, buy used or repair the broken one?
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New Pallet Trucks
If the money is available this may appear to be the easiest option. Jump online, see what offers are available (lots), buy one and it’s on site in two or three days. Sorted. Or is it? How much research was done or did you just buy the first one you saw? What warranty does it have? Is that parts and labour or parts only? Will the supplier come to your premises or is it return to base with all the hassle that involves?
Secondhand Pallet Trucks
It can be tempting to jump onto eBay, find one that looks OK, at a fraction of the price of a new one and buy it. Finally it arrives and off you go. It’s not perfect but it’s better than the old one, perhaps. It doesn’t seem to operate as smoothly as you expected but then it was cheap. At some point it breaks down and the whole cycle starts again!
Repair
One phone call and an engineer arrives on site a day or two later. His van is loaded with parts and tools. He takes a look, explains the
problem, fixes it and asks you to sign his job sheet. Soon an invoice arrives by email which doesn’t seem a lot different than the cost of buying a secondhand one. However, the truck seems smoother, everything works and the fiddly little bit that was missing has been replaced.
Conclusion
So, buy new, buy used or repair the broken one? If the budget is limited, are you better of buying somebody else’s problems or repairing your own? If new seems to be the best answer, a more expensive model is likely to be more cost effective in the longer term than a cheaper one. All three options should have you up and running pretty quickly.