Equipped for Success
Clark Material Handling has completed a companywide restructuring process and is now prepared to focus on the future

In many ways, the trucks and forklifts that Clark Material Handling Co. produces aren't so different from the vehicles that most of us drive to work every day.

Like a car, a Clark lift truck is designed for comfort and convenience, with knobs and handles strategically placed so they are easy to reach and operate. Like a car, a Clark truck usually weighs a few thousand pounds. Like a car, the heart of Clark's line of trucks costs about $20,000 apiece.

"This really is a car if you think about it," says Marty Dorio, president and CEO of Lexington-based Clark Material Handling Co.

Well, yes and no. Despite the aforementioned similarities, key differences separate the average passenger car and Clark's pallet trucks, stackers and forklifts. For one thing, with the possible exception of a leftover 1970s-vintage Volkswagen Rabbit, few cars on the road today are painted in Clark's trademark fluorescent green. The vivid color is used so the trucks can be easily seen on hectic factory or warehouse floors.

Also, few cars can lift thousands upon thousands of pounds, carry the load for a distance, and deposit it somewhere else. That's the role of a Clark forklift, 13,000 of which are assembled annually at the company's plant at 172 Trade Street in Lexington.

Clark also has an office at 749 West Short Street, Lexington, where sales, engineering and training are located. The company operates a secondary assembly plant in Germany, where Clark makes 5,000 trucks a year.

The 260 people who work at the Lexington assembly plant require two and a half days to take a truck from raw materials to finished product. Of course, dozens of trucks of different types and sizes are manufactured simultaneously.

Beginning with steel frames, employees build the trucks, adding wheels, engines, bodies, forks and controls that operate the forklift and the vehicle itself. The engines can be powered by electricity, gasoline, propane or diesel fuel. The source for fuel depends on what the company purchasing the trucks requires and on the environment in which the vehicle operates.

Safety First

Safety features are an important element of Clark trucks. The vehicles include cages that surround the driver's station. The cages are designed to withstand the impact if the trucks tip over or roll. Operators of models in which the driver sits down are instructed to stay put if the vehicles tip. On stand-up models, the drivers are told to simply step out if the trucks start to fall.

"We spend a lot of energy on safety here, explains Dorio. "We have turned down business," he says, when Clark and potential customers disagreed on safety features.

To ensure safety, function and reliability, Clark tests the vehicles extensively in the Trade Street plant in an area complete with ramps, speed bumps and dummy loads that the trucks lift and carry.

Also, Clarks works closely with dealers and customers to test prototypes of vehicles. "It's a pretty interactive process, Dorio says. "We do a series of deliberate contacts."

The trucks are tested both inside and outside the plant, not only for safety but for ease of operation. "It's got to have all the personal attributes," Dorio says. "It's got to be comfortable."

Competing in the Marketplace

Clark, which has annual sales of $500 Million, sells trucks all over the world. Customers include manufacturing plants, warehouses, lumber yards and shipyards. "Anyone who has material-handling needs," says Les Williams, Clark's communications director.

Bob O'Brien, the company's vice president for manufacturing, says Clark is "holding its own" in market share against competitors such as Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Hyster-Yale.

"We're in business to make money, not necessarily to have a big market share," O'Brien says.

Dorio says he's confident about the management-owned company's future because of several factors:

• "We have a rejuvenated product line, 90 percent of which is less than 2 years old," Dorio says.
• "All of our restructuring is done," he says. In 1996, Dorio and Clark's management joined with Citicorp Venture Capital Ltd. to buy the company from Terex. In 1997, Clark acquired Blue Giant, which also produces material-handling equipment.

In the restructured Clark, overhead is 7.5 percent of sales, Dorio says, adding that the company's nearest competitor is at 13 percent. "I don't have all this bureaucracy, the palatial headquarters," he says.

As a management-owned company, Dorio says Clark is more "motivated, dedicated, apolitical. It's the owners of the company, pushing forward. Competitively, we're focused on forklifts."

Clark's chief competitors primarily build other products, Dorio says.

"We have the best distribution in the industry. All of my competitors, they come after the Clark dealers," many of which have been selling Clark products for years. Says Dorio: "I think Clark is probably one of the two or three best-positioned companies in the industry today."

Bryan Armstrong is a staff writer for The Lane Report.

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