When Peri & Sons Farms, one of the largest onion-to-seed companies in the world, searched for ways to increase uptime of its forklift fleet, it sought assistance from Crown Equipment Corporation. The result of the effort came in the form of 127 hours of additional fleet uptime every week. 

During peak season at its California location, Peri & Sons Farms operates 10 to 12 hour shifts, six days a week with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit and onion peels, thick dust and grit in the air. Because of these conditions, Peri & Sons experienced excessive downtime with its existing rental forklift fleet. The forklifts overheated, which forced operators to shut down the truck, clear the radiator and wait 10 minutes for the engine to cool. The fleet also experienced excessive wear on the brake system, wheel hubs, the mast and chains because of the demanding environment.

“Our forklifts experience a lot of quick runs in and out of the facility with outside temperatures in the summertime reaching up to 110 degrees. This typically puts a large strain on our forklift operations,” said Ben Dawson, packing shed manager, Peri & Sons Farms. “Our previous forklifts would get a lot of debris, such as skin from the onions and dust from the fields, stuck in the radiator. This would cause the forklifts to overheat.”

The company switched to utilizing 17 Crown C-5 Series gas forklifts to handle onions from the loading trucks, and transport bins up to 1,000 pounds from the storage room to weighing and bagging lines. The Crown C-5 is built with industrial components and features that are designed to withstand the harshest forklift environments and it features an industrial powertrain with an advanced cooling package. A dual open-core radiator provides separate cooling for the engine and transmission. Crown’s On-Demand Cooling^™ controls the fan speed independently of the engine to maximize cooling performance and automatically clears the radiator each time a user starts the forklift. 

Dawson added, “The Crown C-5 forklifts are performing as promised. They eliminate the overheating problem by reversing the fan every time the operator starts the truck. This blows out the debris that normally would be stuck in the radiator and typically caused our previous forklifts to each overheat about five times a day. The Crown C-5 forklifts enable us to avoid the manual clearing of the radiators, which has resulted in us seeing at least a 10 percent increase in uptime.”