Hand trucks for sale! Think twice before you buy the cheapest

A great hand truck or dolly in the right worker’s hands is productivity gold

by Steve Chase, Kenneth Industries

I always marvel at the ineptitude of mid-level managers who go for budget equipment. A good worker is always limited by a mediocre tool. But a poor worker will still be poor with a crummy tool. So if you are shopping for something as simple as a hand truck, and see hand trucks for sale, here is how to approach what you buy.

Choose a good one, but choose the second or third most expensive initially and then buy one of the best hand trucks on the market

And then test it with your workers. The math bears this out.

Let’s say that you have 10 workers.

A couple are amazing.
Two are decent
And two are fair.
While, the bottom four are lazy or useless.

The 80/20 rule also applies to warehouse workers

Most warehouse and distribution managers will agree with me on this.

The 80/20 rule applies here. 20% of your workers gets 80% of the work done. The remaining 80% gets 20% of the work done. So if you equip everyone with crappy cheap equipment – like a dolly or hand truck – you are massively impairing your best workers and the volume or work done.

So here is the rule to follow for ultimate productivity with something as simple as a hand truck.

When looking at hand trucks for sale, chose use the best minus one rule initially. List out the best hand trucks available and buy on price. However do not ignore features completely.

For hand trucks you will want:

1. Replaceable wheels
2. Replaceable axles
3. Welded steel construction
4. Stackability
5. Maximum load rating

Hand trucks for sale? Use this purchasing formula

Bring the hand truck into the work environment and give it to your staff to use. Find after 2 weeks what they think of it. Listen closely to your high performers. These workers are driven and will fill you in on any issues with the hand truck in terms of performance or usability.

Now go and buy the most expensive and introduce it.

After 2 more weeks check in the with the staff again. See if your high performers rave more. If they are indifferent buy more of the less expensive hand truck units.

If not buy the most expensive.

Quality breeds productivity. However value comes from measuring a product in the work environment and seeing it it is worth the additional cost.

Ready to look at the best hand truck for sale? Click here

Steve Chase was the “manager of the year” at Kenneth Industries for 4 consecutive years running, and may have been 9 years (he started with KI in 2008) except that in 2013 he took a year off to fight  throat cancer, and luckily for KI came back in 2014!