Butternut Mountain Farm Video Case Study – Toyota Forklift

Toyota Forklifts & Butternut Mountain Farm

Announcer: Few things are as natural and pure as sweet maple syrup. The heart of maple syrup production in the United States is Vermont. Butternut Mountain Farm is one of the leading providers of maple syrup in the Green Mountain state. It’s processing and distribution facility in Morrisville regularly contains about 8 million pounds of pure maple syrup. Syrup that is processed here is often used in cookies, candies, maple sugar flavorings, and of course, as pure maple syrup on pancakes and waffles.

John Kingston: A couple of facts that most people might not know about maple syrup, one: it’s a single ingredient, all natural product. The only thing in maple syrup is pure maple syrup that comes from the sap of a maple tree, either a sugar maple or a red maple typically. Most people wouldn’t know that it takes about 40 gallons of sap from a maple tree to make 1 gallon of maple syrup, so it’s a labor of love.

Announcer: Butternut Mountain Farm has its own farm of more than 1,000 acres to draw from about 17,000 tree taps, but with the volume it produces, it must allow on other regional farmers to supply it with syrup to meet demand. The farmers boil the sap into syrup before sending it to Butternut Mountain Farm in large stainless steel drums. The syrup is tested and graded based on its consistency and taste. Toyota reach trucks, equipped with these clamp attachments, are used to move the drums to storage. The trucks pick up two drums at a time and floor stack them one on top of the other. The reach trucks can easily lift the heavy drums of syrup five levels high in this cool room. An onboard camera attached to the truck assists in making sure that the placement is just right.

Rob Shatney: It’s absolutely essential. To be able to go five high you have to be able to reach out with a significant amount of weight in a very study way. The maneuverability is absolutely excellent on those reach lifts and because they’re responsive we’re able to get into really tight spots and stack drums very closely together in an attempt to maximize our storage capacity cube. The nice thing about the Toyota lifts is that, particularly with the reach lifts, we can either use them to move palletized material, we can use them to move drums, we can use them to move 4,500 pound totes. It really gives us a lot of options with a single lift.

Announcer: Next, the raw syrup is taken to production where it is batched, filtered, heated, and then bottled into various sizes. Jugs for club store sales, and smaller bottles, such as for gift packs and single serve use in restaurants. The products are packed into cases and then moved by forklift to storage in these pallet racks.

David Ellis: We’re using Toyota forklifts in all aspects of our operations now. We’ve got drive-in overhead racking that we need to get in and out, and if we can’t pull the pallets out of that racking we can’t load trucks, and then orders don’t go out the door.

Announcer: Toyota three wheel electric forklifts do most of the handling in the warehouse. The three wheel design makes it easy to maneuver loads in and out of the racking. Keeping these trucks and a handful of electric pallet jacks in good working order is the role of Northern Toyota Lift, the local Toyota industrial truck dealer that serves Vermont, Upstate New York, and other parts of New England.

David Ellis: Frankly, it came down very simply to the basics of purchasing around quality, price, and service. The Toyota quality is very well-known and we’ve certainly seen that as well. The pricing was very good and the service that we get from our local dealer at Northern Toyota Lift in Burlington has just really been excellent. We really found them to be hands-on and responsive. I think those are the two things that really distinguish them from other dealers that we talked to. They came right out, they got to know our process and what our needs are, and whenever we had a question or if there is something that needs maintenance they come right out. They’re quick, they’re knowledgeable, they get the part, and because we worked with them from the beginning they really understand what it is we’re trying to do.

Rob Shatney: The customer service that we get from our service provider, Northern Toyota, is absolutely excellent. We have several busy seasons here where downtime is really not an option for us, and having reliable equipment that can be serviced quickly by our service provider is really important for us to keep the operation going. Toyota has allowed us to really do that.

Announcer: At the end of the day, it is the design, dependability, and service that allowed Butternut Mountain Farm to find the sweet spot in its handling with Toyota forklifts.

David Ellis: It’s so simple. Just the simple fact is they are reliable. They work. For people coming in every day and they’ve got a job to do and it’s completely reliant on that forklift working, that’s what’s most important because if that forklift goes down then that person’s not available to do the work that we need them to either. They’ve got the options that we need and when combining that with the service it’s as much as we could ask for.