When Morgan Weis, a TFS account executive, visits facilities to discover what’s on executives’ minds, she hears a lot about safety. That’s not a big surprise, since it has always been a major concern. However, when many businesses transformed the way they operated during the pandemic, they found their safety practices—already a touchy subject—just couldn’t keep pace.

For example, as many facilities saw organic growth from e-commerce, they also began keeping more inventory on hand. That meant warehouse space became tighter, making it more difficult to safely maneuver forklifts. Add the “Great Resignation” and employee retention into the mix and many companies realized they needed to get serious about workers’ well-being.

TFS employees visit thousands of facilities each year. That's how we know that even the most respected names in manufacturing and distribution—Fortune 500 companies with huge budgets—are struggling.

While these big companies have more advantages than most of their peers, they still deal with long MHE lead times, labor shortages, and extreme pressure from the C-suite. We often find that material handling execs have no idea how many MHEs they have overall, let alone in different locations. They've usually lost track of the expensive rentals they're using to fill the gaps while they wait for equipment. And forget about getting the data they need…

It's a mixed forecast for material handling stakeholders. On the one hand, prices are improving and equipment wait times are coming down. On the other, economic hardships and labor challenges continue to cloud the future.

How can facilities stay ahead? To find out, we went straight to Jason Laws, who estimates he and his team have spent countless hours talking with 10,000 material handling executives. In the process, Laws, TFS's Market Development Manager, has not only gained deep insights into the issues facing facilities, he has crafted solutions that increased uptime and saved money.

There’s no understating the power of data. And when it comes to keeping material handling facilities running at peak safety and efficiency, telematics has a crucial role to play.

While telematics—a term that blends "telecommunications" and "informatics"—may seem like the hot new buzzword, it’s not. Telematics, which describes the process of collecting and assessing data from warehouse vehicles and equipment through remote telematics systems (e.g., sensors, GPS systems, onboard diagnostics, etc.), has been in use for about two decades and has become increasingly sophisticated.