JIT Transportation Video Case Study – Toyota Forklift

Toyota Forklift & JIT Transportation

Announcer: Centrally located in the heart of the Silicon Valley, JIT Transportation is ideally situated to be the logistics partner of choice for many high-tech companies. On the transport side, JIT operates 120 over the road trucks and 200 trailers to move goods along West Coast highways, but it also provides warehousing and distribution services for its clients with facilities, Reno, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and this one near San Jose, California: Silicon Valley Central

David Butcher: We’re in the Silicon Valley so we’re a high-tech operation. 90% of all the business that happens here is relegated to the service area that we provide to customers such as Expeditors National, Harmonic, Roku, and various other customers in the high-tech world.

Announcer: Computer systems and other high-tech products make up a large portion of the goods that JIT handles in the San Jose operation with Toyota Forklifts and warehouse equipment. This is a large building: 600,000 square feet. Everywhere you look can be seen products that reflect the output of this region, including clean energy solar panels.

David Butcher: We handle about four different solar programs here where we’re doing direct deliveries out to either big solar farms or to direct consumers. We handle all of the panels. We also handle raw materials, so a full line of products that a solar company would need to install.

Announcer: Besides the high-tech items, clothing, shoes, and other finished goods are also distributed here for JIT’s clients. Helping to keep all of these goods on the move is a full fleet of Toyota Forklifts and Toyota warehouse products, 33 in total. Both propane and electric powered trucks lift and move these heavy crates and pounds of products throughout the building.

David Butcher: We run counterbalance trucks, propane lifts, because those are running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to manage our cross stock operation for the transportation side. Then, we run the full gamut of lifts in the distribution world.

Announcer: Three Toyota reach trucks operate in narrow aisles to put product in and out of high storage racks. Nine Toyota order pickers operate in these racks to select products needed by customers. A number of electric pallet jacks, mainly Toyota’s in-control rider, are also employed in the San Jose facility to load and unload the many trailers that arrive daily and depart from this large building.

The Toyota Forklifts and Toyota warehousing equipment product lines are relatively new to JIT transportation. Previously, JIT used a mix fleet of other brands, and as a result, they weren’t getting the performance they wanted from their equipment.

David Butcher: We were running older equipment, we were buying used equipment, we were dealing with a lot of rentals, which is also used equipment. We had a lot of downtime, a lot of problems with the lifts. We decided to make a move to go with Toyota. The bottom line is the dependability, the service, and the product speaks for itself.

Announcer: The local Toyota Forklifts dealer, Toyota Material Handling of Northern California, locally referred to as TMH, supplies JIT with their material handling equipment fleet, as well as maintains each vehicle to exacting standards.

John Sullivan: Having the right piece of equipment is extremely important to a company’s operation, for safety purposes, also for efficiency purposes. Making sure that all of the equipment is up and running at all times is extremely important. Having one unit down could severely affect the operations. Part of our role in helping JIT succeed was to lower their full maintenance cost while giving them a customizable service plan that fit their needs.

Announcer: Toyota Material Handling of Northern California also introduced JIT to opportunity charging of their electric models, which has reduced JIT’s electrical costs by 25%. Beyond that, Toyota provides JIT with the latest forklift technology at an affordable cost.

David Butcher: We’re niche. We’re a medium-sized company bidding up against some of the larger companies in this industry and Toyota’s provided us that flexibility we needed to be able to supply new equipment to our customers. The biggest thing that I think they brought to us was technology, so we can actually gauge what our drivers are doing with the lifts. We’ve had great service from Toyota. We’ve had little downtime and we feel very confident in the choice that we made with Toyota.