Written by T. Bishop, Dispatch
After 13 years of moving bulk corrugated, we have opinions about forklift attachments. None of these are necessary if you are only handling a few gaylords a week, but if you are running a high-volume operation, the right attachment pays for itself in weeks.
1. Standard tine extensions.
60-inch tine extensions let a standard forklift handle a 48-inch gaylord with the load slightly back from the carriage. They cost $200-$400 and clip on in 30 seconds. We use them every day.
2. A push-pull attachment.
If you are receiving gaylords on slip sheets instead of pallets — which saves about 6% of warehouse footprint and makes loading trailers more efficient — a push-pull attachment is the right tool. It grips the slip sheet, pulls the load onto the platen, and lets you place it on a rack without ever using a wood pallet. They run $4,000-$8,000 and only make sense if you are moving hundreds of loads a week.
3. A drum lifter or carton clamp.
Carton clamps grab a gaylord from the sides instead of underneath. They are common in paper-pulp operations and almost unheard of in general bulk. We do not recommend them for most uses but if you are moving thousand-pound loads in a tight aisle, they let you stack four high without a pallet.
4. A roll clamp.
Not technically for gaylords — for the reels of corrugated stock that some big operations buy direct. If you are buying linerboard rolls and converting in-house, you need a roll clamp. If you are not, ignore this one.
Our actual setup.
Five of our six forklifts run plain tine extensions and nothing else. The sixth has a push-pull attachment that we use for the slip-sheet portion of our outbound shipments. We have looked at carton clamps three times and never bought one. Sometimes the simplest tool is the right tool.