How smarter handling is reshaping timber yards. By Campbell McInnes

For anyone who has spent time on a timber yard, the daily juggling act is a familiar one.

Real estate is at a premium, labour is hard to find and keep, and every pack of timber that moves through the warehouse is a pack that could be damaged, delayed or mishandled.

It’s a business built on volume and margin, and both of those things are squeezed the moment product handling goes wrong.

For Bruce Peatman, Managing Director of Hubtex Australia, these pressures are exactly why the company’s flagship multi-directional side-loader, the PhoeniX, has become such a fixture in timber yards around the country.

Bruce walked me through how the PhoeniX has been built, not as an off-the-shelf forklift, but as a platform that can be shaped around whatever a timber business throws at it.

A MACHINE BUILT AROUND THE PRODUCT

The PhoeniX didn’t appear out of nowhere.  According to Bruce, it grew out of Hubtex’s earlier multi-directional side-loaders and was deliberately positioned as the company’s premium offering. “The PhoeniX is differentiated because it really is our frontline machine. It’s our premium product,” he explained, contrasting it with the more standardised MaxX range.

What sets it apart is the sheer breadth of configuration available. “The PhoeniX has the greatest level of variation. We can change that machine, and configure it to suit basically any customer’s needs,” Bruce said.

That flexibility runs from load bed length and fork spacing right through to electronics, sensors and guidance systems; “our basic platform to do anything to, up to and including automation.”

This matters more in timber than almost any other industry, because timber simply doesn’t behave like the cargo most forklifts were designed for. As Bruce put it, “Conventional forklifts are made to handle an ice cube, a pallet.” Timber, by contrast, comes in long lengths, flexible packs and slippery surfaces that can shift the moment they’re lifted. Engineered Wood Products (EWP) can run anywhere from 2.4 to 20 metres, with most sitting around the five to six metre mark, a world away from the neat, square pallet a standard forklift is designed to lift.

That variability shows up in the equipment itself. While Bruce is quick to point out there’s no such thing as a “standard” PhoeniX, the most common configuration sold into timber yards uses a 1200-millimetre load bed matched to 1200-millimetre forks, set up to work with 1200-millimetre racking arms as a complete system. But that’s only the starting point. Hubtex has built carriages with tynes spaced up to ten metres apart, spreader bars stretching to 15 metres, and integrated carriages nine or ten metres long where the product demands it. At the other end of the scale, Bruce is currently quoting a machine with a 2.5-metre load bed and 1.8-metre forks for wide stillages, and configurations as narrow as 600 millimetres for the tightest aisles. “This is the beauty of the PhoeniX,” he said, “it’s customisable to the specific product.”

This is arguably the PhoeniX’s real point of difference as no two sites end up with the same truck. Fork tynes and load beds are just one part of it. Camera systems can be positioned wherever an operator needs them, battery chemistry can be chosen between lead acid and lithium-ion, and tyres can be specified for warehouses, hard yards or rough outdoor conditions. “We can set up trucks with rubber tyres,” Bruce said, noting that in Europe, PhoeniX trucks are built to operate in snow, so “these Phoenix trucks are not just confined to the warehouses.”

Everything, right up to guidance and automation packages, is built around the individual site and customer requirements. As Bruce sums it up, the process “starts with the product”, its dimensions, weight and handling quirks.

Even within one business, the bulk of a product range is often straightforward to design around, “however they may have 20% of their products which are more unique to that business,” and it’s in solving that trickier slice that Hubtex’s 31 years in timber earns their keep.

PROTECTING PRODUCT: REDUCING DAMAGE AT EVERY TURN

Product damage is one of the quiet costs of the timber industry, rarely headline news, but a constant drain on margin. Bruce doesn’t mince words about its scale. “Product damage, that’s a huge cost for the timber industry,” he said, noting that every extra handling step increases the risk of damaging both the timber and its packaging to the point where it’s no longer merchantable.

The PhoeniX tackles this in a fundamentally different way to a conventional counterbalance forklift. Rather than lifting a pack across the machine and travelling with it hanging out to one side, the PhoeniX carries the load parallel to its own direction of travel, supported along its length by a proper load bed. Bruce advised, “customers pick up the product further out from the centre of gravity, which prevents a lot of turning and twisting movements.”  The load bed itself does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to protecting flexible or slippery products such as MDF. Bruce used MDF architrave packs as an example of just how much a product can flex and slide as it’s picked up, which is precisely why a stabilising deck makes such a difference.

Widening the carriage compounds the benefit: Bruce explained, “instead of forks sitting roughly a metre apart, as they would on a conventional forklift, a PhoeniX can support the product out to two and a half or three metres, dramatically reducing flex and the risk of a pack sliding off the tines.”

There’s also a double-handling saving that flows through the whole operation. “A customer can basically, with a sideloader, take the timber from the truck into the racks,” Bruce said, cutting out intermediate steps and the damage risk that comes with each one.

GUIDING HANDS: PRECISION TECHNOLOGY FOR CONFIDENT OPERATORS

Getting a long pack of timber accurately into a rack, time after time, is where operator skill and machine technology need to work together. Hubtex offers a layered set of guidance options depending on how far a customer wants to go.

The entry point is straightforward rail and roller guidance. “The most common system we use is guide rails and guide rollers,” Bruce said. “It is a simple system, relatively low cost which works in most applications.” For longer runs, wire guidance takes over, quietly steering the truck down the aisle so the operator can focus on positioning rather than driving. “The operator doesn’t have to worry about where he’s steering the truck as it just goes down that aisle,” Bruce said. “He can then stop at the location, lifts at the correct height, and the job is done.”

From there, the technology moves towards genuine automation. Barcode readers can tell a truck’s position in an aisle down to the millimetre, allowing the system to work hand- in-hand with a warehouse management system to guarantee the right pack is picked or placed. Laser guidance offers another option, both in and out of the racks.

One of the more recent additions is an aisle entry assist system, which uses cameras to read the racking and automatically align and steer the truck into an aisle at the push of a button; a task operator previously had to manage manually.

Height selection systems then take over once inside, stopping the forks at exactly the right level. The upshot, according to Bruce, is that guidance technology quietly removes a layer of cognitive load from the operator. “It takes it out of their mind,” he said. “All the operator has to do is look in both directions…  look out for pedestrians, and hazards.”

Visibility plays its own role in reducing damage and improving safety. Because the PhoeniX cabin sits facing the load side-on, operators aren’t twisting around to check a load behind them the way they would in a conventional forklift. “With our machine, we sit facing the load, sideways, so it’s as simple as looking to the right or the left as you’re driving with the load,” Bruce said, with cameras available to enhance the view further wherever needed.

The results, Bruce says, speak for themselves. In some cases, the combination of cantilever racking and a side-loader have paid for itself purely through the damage it prevented. “We’ve had cases where the rack system and side loaders together have been paid for out of the damage that they previously were getting,” he said.

SQUEEZING MORE FROM EVERY SQUARE METRE

If damage is the quiet cost, space is the loud one. Land prices, particularly around Sydney and Melbourne, have pushed many long- established timber yards into difficult relocation decisions, and Bruce sees this pressure only intensifying. “I’ve seen a lot of well-established timber yards that have had to move,” he said, “and it’s such a difficult decision because the land… availability is the one key thing.”

The response has been twofold: build up and narrow the aisles. Where timber warehouses once topped out around six metres, Bruce says eight and a half metres is now common, and Hubtex has fitted trucks with lift heights as high as 14 metres. The aisle-width side of the equation is where the multi-directional design earns its keep. “I think the key one there is narrow aisles,” Bruce said. “We start with an aisle that’s about 2.5 metres for a standard 1200 pack.  Conventional forklift, you’re going to be looking at around 8 metres.”

That gap comes down to how each machine travels. A conventional forklift carrying a long pack across its width needs the length of the product plus a safety margin to move down an aisle. The PhoeniX, travelling with the load parallel to the machine, only needs its own width. “We travel with the product parallel to the machine,” Bruce explained. “You need the width of the machine, really, and that’s it.”

Pushed to its limits, Hubtex has engineered aisles as narrow as 1.9 metres, using a 600-millimetre configuration, the smallest the company has built, along with stand-up cabin options for operators doing a lot of getting on and off the machine. The more popular choice for this style of work, however, is a cross-facing cabin.

The combined effect on capacity can be dramatic. Bruce is careful to point out that results depend heavily on the starting point.

“If you’re currently handling with conventional forklifts, then yes, 100% is achievable, no problem at all,” he said.  “Generally, we find if we’re just narrowing down aisles and making tweaks and adjustments, then 40% is quite realistic.”

MULTIDIRECTIONAL MOVEMENT: A DIFFERENT WAY TO TRAVEL

Underpinning both the damage-reduction and space-saving story is the PhoeniX’s multidirectional steering, the ability to drive forward, sideways and diagonally, and to rotate on the spot. “You don’t have to swing the load,” Bruce said. “When you turn, you can move the whole machine diagonally… we can drive out, spin around on the spot and go straight back in.”

On Hubtex’s HX steering system (360 degrees steering), operators can change direction while still moving, flipping a lever to smoothly transition from travelling sideways to a new direction without stopping. “This saves time, because you don’t need to stop and take six or seven seconds to change direction, the machine does it automatically,” Bruce said, a feature that also reduces tyre wear and energy use.

POWER, SAFETY AND THE ELECTRIC ADVANTAGE

The PhoeniX’s electric drivetrain adds another dimension to the safety and efficiency conversation, particularly for businesses operating indoors or in mixed environments. Beyond the obvious emissions benefit, Bruce points to a change he’s witnessed firsthand among operators. Six months after installing electric machines at one site, he recalled operators thanking him because they were “not stressed and no longer had headache,” no longer breathing in the fumes and soot that used to coat product handled by diesel or gas-powered trucks.  Battery technology has also moved on considerably. Lithium-ion batteries, Bruce says, can be topped up throughout the day rather than requiring a full overnight charge, effectively removing the old constraint of forgetting to charge a battery overnight and losing the use of a machine the next day.

With an expected battery life of eight to ten years, it’s also reshaping how customers think about long-term rental and ownership costs.

REAL-WORLD RESULTS: NORTHSHORE TIMBERS

Asked for an example of the PhoeniX solving a genuine handling challenge, Bruce didn’t hesitate to point to Northshore Timbers, a customer Hubtex has worked with for three decades. Their order-picking system, built around picking from the first three rack levels by hand cart and replenishing from above, was ahead of its time, and the site’s discipline around maintenance and organisation has kept two machines running reliably for 24 years, machines Hubtex has only recently replaced. It’s a relationship Bruce clearly takes pride in, and one that illustrates how a well-designed layout and a well-maintained fleet reinforce each other over the long term.

LOOKING AHEAD: AUTOMATION AND SMARTER WAREHOUSES

Bruce expects automation to play an increasing role in timber handling, though he’s realistic about the added complexity compared with uniform, palletised freight.

“Once you throw in timber, there’s so many variables that you need to account for,” he said, which is why vision and guidance systems tailored specifically to timber will remain critical. Semi-automation, barcode and QR-based warehouse control, and vision systems capable of working to millimetre tolerances are all, in his view, “creeping in” and set to become standard rather than novel.

EVALUATING THE INVESTMENT

Bruce has watched the way customers weigh up a purchase change considerably over the years. The old habit of comparing ticket prices against a conventional forklift, he says, is a losing argument for a machine built to this level of complexity. “It always used to be that the customer would look at the ticket price,” he explained, “which is an argument we’re never going to win. We’re a much more complex and heavy-duty machine specifically designed.”

That’s shifted towards a more considered approach, with customers increasingly digging into after-sales support and the total cost of ownership across the life of the machine, rather than the number on day one.

Bruce welcomes the change and says it tends to flag the customers who understand their own business best. Timber businesses also need to think beyond what they’re handling today, given how quickly product ranges evolve, and factor in the rising value of the timber itself, which raises the stakes on how carefully it’s stored and moved.

For a business weighing up whether to upgrade at all, Bruce suggests starting with an honest look in the mirror is existing equipment causing damage, what growth is planned, how much more stock needs to be carried, and will the warehouse need extra space for order picking and assembly down the track. From there, he says, local support becomes critical, plenty of equipment arrives in Australia “sold off a brochure, with very little local support,” leaving customers stranded when something goes wrong years down the line.

Even lead times factor into the equation. A customised PhoeniX typically takes 28 to 30 weeks from order to delivery, though Hubtex keeps a number of standard configurations on hand that can turn around in as little as four weeks, alongside hire and second-hand options for businesses that can’t wait.

THE BOTTOM LINE

For businesses weighing up an investment of this scale, Bruce’s advice is to look well beyond the sticker price. Total cost of ownership, local support, spare parts availability and the reliability of the machine over five, ten or fifteen years all matter more than the number on the quote (for information on Hubtex’s after sales service, see the editorial on page 26 of the May/Jun issue of Timber Trader News). Above all, he frames the decision as strategic rather than transactional: “This is a machine which is going to be at the heart of their business,” he said, “and if it does stop or is not productive or efficient, it is going to severely impact their business.”

With roughly 400 PhoeniX units now  working across Australian timber yards, and  a design philosophy that starts and ends with  the product itself, it’s a machine that has  quietly become part of the industry’s daily  rhythm — reducing damage, reclaiming  space, and giving timber businesses room to  grow without having to  find a bigger block of land.

For more information please visit: https://hubtex.com.au/ or scan the QR code.