A CAREER OF ACHIEVEMENT IN NARROW AISLE MATERIALS HANDLING

Translift Bendi's Chairman is a leading design authority. Fred Brown has spent his career working towards making very narrow aisle (VNA) storage as cost effective as possible, whilst trying not to sacrifice productivity or efficiency. His many achievements are recognised by the industry both on and off the record. Many of the industry concepts and designs available today might not be around if it hadn't been for Fred's vision:

THE MAN-UP ORDER-PICKER/STACKER (VNA)

Around 1970, Fred pioneered the design of and marketed the world's first man-rising/order-picker machine, called the SpaceMaster. This design was later to be the foundation for many other examples and Translift produced the type for most well known companies within the industry for many years.

THE MINI TURRET-TRUCK (VNA)

The mini turret-truck was developed in the late 1970's by Fred and introduced the concept of 'Affordable Narrow Aisle' as it brought the man-down turret stacker to nearly half the cost of what similar trucks cost. This theory was later expanded to the conversion of existing reach and counterbalance trucks into VNA machines; the product was called Easistak and was yet again a machine produced in quantity for some of the big forklift truck manufacturers by Translift.

LOW-PROFILE GUIDE RAIL SYSTEM

Fred was also instrumental in the development of low-profile guide rails, which enabled less-expensive narrow-aisle warehouse installations. The stacking of pallets straight onto the ground floor, without a need for a bottom-beam reduced cost and increased flexibility.

THE ARTICULATED FORKLIFT TRUCK

Fred's original idea for an articulated truck came in the early 1980's and development continued on to a fully-fledged articulated truck chassis which was patented some years later.