Are Hyster forklifts reliable? The heavy capacity guide

Hyster is the badge you see on the heavy end of a yard. The range runs from small warehouse trucks up past forty tonnes, and the machines our buyers ask for most sit in the four to ten tonne band that moves timber, steel and containers. Are Hyster forklifts reliable? Yes, in the way a heavy simple machine is reliable, with two catches worth knowing first.

Hyster buys its engines in, so the parts route changes with the build. And the badge is in tonnes in some markets and in pounds in others, while sister brand Yale numbers its trucks differently again.

What a Hyster forklift looks like

These show the type of machine we source in this brand. They are not photos of a unit we are holding. When we find your machine you get real photos of that exact one.

Are Hyster forklifts reliable?

Yes for hard outdoor work, and the reason is not clever engineering. A Hyster is a thick steel chassis, a big counterweight, a bought in engine and a powershift transmission. There is very little on one that a competent diesel mechanic cannot follow.

Hyster started building for the logging and heavy trades in Portland, Oregon in 1929, and still builds to that idea.

Now the other half. Hyster does not build its own engines. Current four to five and a half tonne trucks are listed with a Kubota 3.8 litre diesel or its LPG version, and the six and seven tonne trucks with a Kubota diesel or a PSI 4.3 litre LPG unit. Older machines carry other engines, so read the engine plate.

Hyster vs Yale: same parent, two badges, one confusing number

Hyster and Yale are one company. Yale and Towne built its first forklift in the 1920s, NACCO bought Yale in 1985 and Hyster after it, put the two together in 1989, and the business was spun out in 2012. It trades today as Hyster-Yale, Inc. from Cleveland, Ohio, and owns both badges along with Bolzoni.

So across much of the range you are looking at trucks from the same engineering and the same plants in different paint. The naming is not shared, and each badge has its own dealers.

Read a row across and the trap shows itself. A Hyster H40-70A and a Yale GP40-70N cover the same four to seven thousand pound band. Yale splits metric and pound naming the way Hyster does, so a GP20-35UX is in tonnes and a GP135-155VX is in pounds. Order against the full model string and serial from the data plate, not the name on the counterweight.

How to read a Hyster model number, metric versus North American

Everything before the letters is capacity, and the unit changes with the market. A metric Hyster badge is in tonnes. A North American badge is in hundreds of pounds. That one difference is the most expensive misreading on this page.

H5.0FT and H50FT are not the same truck and not close. One lifts five tonnes, the other about a fifth of that. Published data for an H50FT gives 5,000 lb at a 24 inch load centre.

The letters after the number are the series, not the size. No public key covers every suffix, so confirm the build on the data plate.

The year is a letter inside the serial, and codes like that repeat, so the letter alone cannot tell you the decade. We are not printing a Hyster year letter table here, because no Hyster or Yale document we could get hold of publishes one, and a wrong table costs more than none. Send the full serial to a dealer or to us for the year in writing. Our forklift model number decoder covers the other brands and the forklift serial number year lookup covers dating.

Hyster for container, port and heavy outdoor work

This is where the brand earns its money. Hyster lists ports, intermodal work and container yards among the industries its heavy duty range is built for, and it builds machines for boxes rather than pallets.

There are three shapes of container machine and they do not swap. Empty container handlers are listed around 6,000 to 11,000 kg, laden handlers sit in the 40,000 to 52,000 kg class, and reachstackers at 45,000 and 46,000 kg pick loaded boxes out of the second and third row.

Most of our buyers need none of those. They need a counterbalance truck that can work inside a box, and the mast decides that, not the engine. A container door is only about 2.28 m high, so the mast has to collapse under it, and you want free lift so the forks rise inside without the mast growing. Our container spec forklift guide has those numbers, and unloading a shipping container with a forklift covers the method.

Outdoors the tyres matter too. Pneumatic tyres soak up broken ground, solid tyres survive nails and rebar. A cushion tyre S series Hyster is an indoor machine and the wrong truck for a working yard.

Big capacity: what changes above 5 tonnes

Four things change, and the engine is not one of them. The load centre it is rated at, the tyres, the weight of the machine, and how it travels to you.

Start with the load centre, because it changes what the badge promises. Hyster rates its four to five and a half tonne trucks at 500 or 600 mm, the six and seven tonne trucks at 600 mm, and the heavy duty range at 600, 900 or 1,200 mm. Sixteen tonnes at 1,200 mm is not the same promise as sixteen tonnes at 600 mm. Treat every figure as typical and confirm it on the data plate.

Then the tyres. From about four tonnes up the front axle usually carries two tyres a side, which is why the machine pictured runs four drive tyres where a 2.5 tonne truck runs two. The inner tyre wears out of sight.

Then weight. A counterbalance truck weighs far more than it lifts, since the counterweight is the whole trick, and it is the service weight, not the rated capacity, that decides the crane, the trailer and the freight. Get it in writing before you book. Read shipping a forklift in a container before you assume a big machine travels inside one, and our forklift shipping cost guide explains that number.

Parts and service for a Hyster outside North America

Parts exist and they are not cheap. Hyster genuine parts price like a premium brand, the aftermarket is strong in North America and Europe and thinner elsewhere, and the bought in engine is what saves you.

That is the advantage of a Hyster far from a dealer. The engine, water pump, injectors and starter belong to an engine maker with its own worldwide parts trade. What makes you wait is Hyster specific work, mast sections, transmission internals, looms and body panels.

Hyster is not only an American truck either. It has built machines in Europe, China and Brazil, so a used one landing in Africa or the Gulf often came from a European plant, and those builds differ underneath.

So the question is not whether Hyster parts exist. It is who holds them within a day of you, and who will open a powershift transmission. Our guide to forklift engines explained covers which families are easy to keep running.

What to check before you buy a used Hyster

Check the plate, then the load path, then everything that touches the ground. On a heavy truck the costly faults live in the mast, the drive axle and the transmission.

• Data plate: model string, serial, rated capacity, load centre and mast height, photographed so every character reads.
• Engine plate: a separate photo, because your parts route follows the engine, not the badge.
• Mast and chains: a full lift and lower on video, watching for a jerky stage change, uneven chains and oil down the channels.
• Forks: cracks at the heel, thinning, a bent blade. A pair this size is a serious line on the bill.
• Tyres: every one, including the inner tyre of each pair on the drive axle.
• Transmission: driven forward and back on video, listening for a delay or a clunk on the change.
• Hour meter: photographed running, and again at the end of the video so the two agree. See how many hours is too many.
• Counterweight and guard: heavy trucks get hit, and fresh paint usually covers a repair.

The brand independent list is our used forklift buying checklist. If the seller is new to you, read buying a forklift overseas safely first.

What we source and where we ship it

We do not sit on a yard of Hyster trucks. You tell us the capacity, the load centre, the mast height, the tyres and the port, we go and find the machine, photograph that actual unit, and quote you a landed price.

In Hyster we source 2 to 3.5 tonne diesel counterbalance, 4 to 5.5 tonne diesel counterbalance, 6 to 9 tonne heavy diesel, LPG versions of the smaller sizes, and heavier machines including empty container handlers on request. Above ten tonnes the search takes longer.

If you are not sure which model you want, describe the work. The heaviest load, how far out from the fork face it sits, the highest lift you need and whether it works inside a container tell us more than a model number. If a Hyster is wrong for you we will say so and point you at Linde, Komatsu or Toyota.

The pictures on this page are brand accurate renders of what a Hyster of this type looks like, not machines on a yard. When we find yours you get photographs of that exact truck, its plate, its hour meter and its forks, before you commit. Start at forklifts for sale or use the form below.

The Hyster machines we source

Tell us which of these fits your work, or just tell us your loads and your site and we will point you at the right one.

• 2 to 3.5 ton diesel counterbalance
• 4 to 5.5 ton diesel counterbalance
• 6 to 9 ton heavy diesel counterbalance
• 2 to 5.5 ton LPG counterbalance
• 10 ton and heavier, including empty container handlers