Inside the hall, automation took over long ago. Outside, between buildings, across yards and gravel, someone still drives a forklift — or carries.
In-plant transport is one of the most accident-prone activities there is. In Germany, more than 36,000 occupational accidents involving forklifts, pallet trucks and similar industrial trucks were recorded in a single year — on average over 145 per working day. The most common patterns are always the same: people struck, loads falling, forklifts tipping over.
Since automated guided vehicles were introduced, both transport damage and accident numbers have fallen compared with manual transport. So far, though, that applies mainly where those systems operate: inside the hall.
The second point is plain labour economics. Fetching a tool, bringing a spare part, taking a sample to the lab, moving a pallet from building C to A — none of these are difficult tasks, just many short ones. Added up, they tie up hours of people who were not hired to do them.
Automated guided vehicles are built for level, dry, marked floors. As soon as the route crosses the yard, everything changes: gravel and cobbles, rain and snow, edges and ramps, gradients, puddles, changing light — and traffic that does not keep to lanes.
That is why exactly this stretch stays manned, even though it is the most monotonous of all. A tracked vehicle is built for these conditions: it carries on soft ground, handles gradients and is unbothered by the weather.
Add to that a decision we took early: from PALLAS.150 upwards, payloads are defined in standard pallet dimensions — the European standard pallet, 800 × 1,200 mm, divisible into smaller modules on the same grid. The vehicle therefore fits into existing logistics instead of demanding its own. Whatever it sets down, any forklift can move on.
Between buildings, from the loading dock to the store, from the store to the workshop. Handed over in pallet format, so that existing handling equipment and racking remain in use unchanged.
Bringing material where staff should not go repeatedly — during a shutdown, into areas with hazardous materials, or into a section whose atmosphere has not yet been cleared.
Tools, spare parts, measuring equipment, lab samples. Frequency makes the difference, not weight: many short trips that skilled staff currently make on foot.
The combination often pays: the same platform that moves material by day can take over the site round at night — the route is the same anyway.