Dive Brief:
- ArcBest on Tuesday rolled out a line of automated forklifts and reach trucks for use in customers’ distribution centers and manufacturing facilities.
- The technology, known as Vaux Smart Autonomy, incorporates and builds on the ArcBest’s Vaux Freight Movement System, a change from traditional warehouse operations that allows trailers to be unloaded in seconds.
- “It's really more than just forklifts,” ArcBest Chairman, President and CEO Judy McReynolds told Trucking Dive in an interview. “It takes those combined with intelligent software, and then also tele-operations capabilities that are remote.”
Dive Insight:
The Freight Movement System uses a platform on a trailer’s floor that can be removed, allowing the entire trailer to be unloaded at once. Then, once the freight on the removed platform is on the warehouse floor, forklifts can swarm it simultaneously, rather than each waiting their turn to unload the trailer.
The system’s software pinpoints the locations of loads within a trailer.
ArcBest sees the autonomous dock equipment as another step in maximizing efficiency for its customers.
The automated forklifts can also be controlled manually on site or remotely by human operators, a combination of capabilities that the CEO said is key to scaling the autonomous technology. ArcBest has piloted the equipment with retailers and manufacturers, including automakers, McReynolds said.
“You can imagine a human being involved ... on a portion of a forklift’s moves, but then the rest of it being operated autonomously,” McReynolds said in the interview. “We hear back a lot of positive comments about how flexible this is, and how it's an easier transition to get this put in place.”
The Vaux 5K Counterbalance Forklift has a capacity of 5,000 pounds, max speed of 7.4 mph, max heights of 18 feet and 23 feet, requiring at least 12.5 feet of aisle space. For tighter spaces, the Narrow Aisle Reach Truck has a capacity of 4,000 or 4,5000 pounds, max speed of 7.5 mph, max height of 26 or 40 feet and needs aisle space of just 9.5 feet.
“Because of how flexible it is and how it can connect with warehouse management systems, it really is effective at addressing kind of the variety or the variability that you can have with facilities or processes, or even product characteristics within those warehouses,” McReynolds said.
