Pallet jacks: the number that decides is not the capacity
A 5,500 lb jack and a 4,500 lb jack do the same work in almost every building in the country. What actually separates them is about an inch of fork height — and that is the figure that goes missing from the spec page.
Capacity is almost never what fails
Think about the last pallet you moved by hand. Was it 5,500 lb? Was it half that? Most hand-moved freight sits a long way below the rating of any truck on the market, and the rating is still the number printed largest in every advert.
Three other figures decide whether the machine is any use to you:
- Lowered fork height. How tall the forks are with the truck on the floor. If that is more than the entry height of your pallet, the truck does not go in, and it does not matter what it can lift.
- Outside fork spread. Whether the forks land in the openings of a 48 × 40 GMA pallet, or somewhere in between them.
- Service weight. What the truck itself weighs. It decides whether you can move it when the battery dies, whether it goes on a liftgate, and what the deck under it has to carry.
None of the three is the headline. All three are on the spec sheet — when there is one.
The figures, side by side
| Titan seriesLift-Rite | Low ProfileLift-Rite | WP 3030Crown | European block-pallet truckJungheinrich AM 22 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Manual, standard | Manual, low profile | Electric walkie | Manual, standard |
| Rated capacity | 5,500 lb | 5,000 lb | 4,500 lb | 4,850 lb (2,200 kg) |
| Lowered fork height | not published | 2 in | not on the profile sheet | 3.3 in (83 mm) |
| Fork lengths | 32 / 36 / 42 / 48 in | 36 / 42 / 48 in | 36 / 42 / 48 in nominal | 45 in (1,150 mm) |
| Outside fork spread | 16 / 20.5 / 27 in | 18 / 20.5 / 27 in | 18.1 / 21.3 / 26.4 in | overall width 20.5 in (520 mm) |
| Power | you | you | 24 V · 160–195 Ah · 3.5 mph loaded | you |
| Service weight | not published | not published | 715 lb less battery | not published |
Look at what is missing, not at what is there
Read the lowered-fork-height row across. The low profile truck publishes it — 2 in, right there in the specifications, because on that model it is the selling point. The standard truck from the same manufacturer does not publish it at all.
That is not an accusation, it is just what we found when we went looking, and it tells you how the product is sold: the number appears when it flatters the machine and vanishes when it does not. The European truck in the last row publishes it as a matter of course — 83 mm — because the European spec convention (VDI 2198) has a lettered field for it, h13, and leaving it blank looks like an error.
So when a US spec sheet has no lowered fork height on it, you are not looking at a bad truck. You are looking at a figure you will have to ask for, and it is the one that decides.
When the inch matters
A sound 48 × 40 GMA stringer pallet takes a standard truck without complaint. The pallets that stop you are the other ones:
- Low-deck plastic pallets, the kind that come in with imported goods.
- Half pallets and display pallets from retail programmes.
- Any pallet that has been run over — a stringer that has been split and nailed back, or bottom deck boards that have sagged, loses entry height permanently.
- A loaded pallet sitting on another pallet, or on dunnage in a container.
If that is your traffic, the low profile truck is not a luxury, it is the only one that works. If it is not, the extra inch buys you nothing and costs you lift height.
Two-way entry is a US problem
This is where the American pallet makes the decision different. A GMA pallet is built on three stringers running the 48 in direction, so the openings for a pallet jack are across the 40 in face, and there are exactly two of them. Get the fork spread wrong and the forks do not land in the openings at all.
And because the stringers run the long way, a standard GMA pallet is two-way entry unless it has notched stringers — which also means the fork has to cover the 48 in direction, not the 40:
Electric is not about weight
The walkie in the table is rated 4,500 lb — a thousand pounds less than the manual truck above it. Nobody buys a walkie because the manual one could not lift the load.
They buy it for distance. A manual jack moves two tons all day as long as the run is short and the floor is flat. What ruins an operator is the same trip made forty times: dock to back wall and back again, dragging half a ton each way. That is the arithmetic that pays for a walkie, and nothing else is.
What comes with it, and does not appear in the sales conversation:
| What changes | Manual | Walkie (WP 3030) | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service weight | you drag it | 715 lb before the battery | Dead battery in the middle of an aisle and it is not going anywhere by hand. Check your liftgate rating before you assume it travels. |
| Speed | your walking pace | 3.5 mph loaded | Brisk walking is about 3.5 mph. It is not faster than you — you are just not pushing. |
| Power | none | 24 V, 160–195 Ah | A charging point, floor space to park it on charge, and somebody who remembers to plug it in. |
| Fork spread | 16 / 20.5 / 27 in | 18.1 / 21.3 / 26.4 in | Close to the manual widths but not identical. Check it against your pallets rather than assuming. |
What to measure before you ask for a quote
Five minutes with a tape saves you the wrong purchase. Nobody is going to ask you for these, so bring them:
- The entry height of your worst pallet — not the good one. The lowest and the most beaten-up one on the floor. That figure outranks everything else.
- Your narrowest aisle and your tightest door.
- How many feet a day one operator covers with it. That, and only that, decides manual or electric.
- What the floor is and what condition it is in. That decides the wheel material.
- Whether it has to ride on a truck, and what that liftgate is rated for.
What this page is not
We have not tested any of these machines and we are not going to say we have. The figures are the ones each manufacturer publishes on its own spec sheet or profile sheet, and you can check every one of them in a couple of minutes. Where a figure is missing from the table, it is missing because it is missing from the manufacturer's page — that absence is the most useful thing on this page.
And if the pallet itself has lost height at the bottom, no truck fixes that: it is a pallet that has dropped out of the pool, and it gets charged to you either way. That one is in They give the pallets back, but not the value.