Viking Freight Video Case Study – Toyota Forklift

Toyota Forklifts & Viking Freight

Announcer: If you live on a Caribbean island, you rely heavily on imports. You don’t have sufficient land or resources to grow or manufacture the things you use every day. That’s why there are companies like Miami-based, Viking Freight Consolidators.

Bryan Valdes: Our company’s been in existence for 35 years. We’re a consolidator of freight, shipping primarily to the Caribbean and South American markets. We receive freight for our numerous clients throughout the region from various suppliers throughout the United States and in other parts of the world. We receive, we store, we load containers for these clients. We also handle air freight shipments on a weekly basis going to different markets where we will consolidate, repack, and prepare all documentations and everything required for shipment.

We are a marine insurance broker. We insure cargo for our clients. We handle the inland freight portion of shipments for our clients from different origin points in the United States to Miami, or to Jacksonville, or to other ports in the United States, whether it be a small UPS shipment to a full container load shipment.

Announcer: Pallets of products are received and loaded into temporary storage racks or staged on the floor until they are ready to ship to markets, including Aruba, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and Bonaire. TVs, dog food, cake mix, tires, refrigerators, pool supplies, toilet paper. Just about everything needed to sustain life passes through this facility, and keeping it all on the move is the work of Toyota forklifts.

Bryan Valdes: We currently are operating three, 2.5-ton Toyota forklifts. We use them to receive freight, here behind us, in various fashions, whether it’s offloading 53-foot trucks, flat racks, or small UPS shipments, FedEx-type shipments. We use the trucks to store the freight throughout the warehouse in racks, and then we use a forklift again to load containers.

We exclusively use Toyotas, primarily for the reliability in our business. We’re a small business, and they are our most important asset of the day. Our business out here in the warehouse would not function without a reliable forklift. We work with Toyota because we know that when we need them, they’re going to turn on, they’re going to work, and it’s as simple as that.

The maintenance is reasonable. We find that with good preventive maintenance, they last for years. The downtime is very, very minimal, and that’s important when we have a limited fleet.

JC Martinez: Oh, let me tell you, these are very convenient, very simple to drive, the maneuver. I love the way the steering goes around. I mean, in tight spaces I can maneuver it around, and I get the freight out without any problems. It’s definitely comfortable. The seats are very comfortable. I’m a big guy, so that’s part of my thing is comfortability. I really enjoy driving the Toyota forklifts.

We’ve been driving forklifts, Toyota, for years. 20-something years that I’ve been here, it’s always been Toyota. We’ve never had any issues and we really … I don’t think we’ll ever change from that.

Bryan Valdes: We like the visibility that the operator feels and has with these units. We receive other units for clients who are not loyal to the Toyota brand, and obviously we have to offload them from trucks. So we get the opportunity to try other units from other competitors of Toyota, and we just find that the safety and the visual that the driver has is superior. That’s important for safety.

We try to turn them over every five years, give or take, depending on the hours, but that’s about the average over the years. What we usually do is bring them in for one last preventive maintenance stop, and then we send them to our offices overseas. We have offices in Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, and other markets. We will send them down there because we know that while we enjoy the first five years of the brand new truck, they will continue to use them for anywhere from seven to 10 more years. We find that we get a good 15 years out of them.

And down there, because of the facilities, et cetera, they’re used in a much more, let’s say, rough way because the facilities aren’t like they are here in the US. It’s important to have reliable trucks down there but not necessarily new trucks. That’s kind of been the strategy for 20 years and it’s worked really well for us.

Announcer: Toyota forklifts, helping Viking Freight Consolidators maintain the economic lifeline to the Caribbean and beyond.