EP’s Pallet Trucks at Walmart China. Founded in the United States by Sam Walton, Walmart has now grown to the world’s largest retailer with over 11,200 stores across 27 countries. It entered China market in 1996 and has currently operated more than 440 stores in over 180 Chinese cities. Since then Walmart announced its plan to open more stores and warehouses in China over the next few years.
This big movement required a host of replacements of the existing material handling equipment. In order to achieve standard localization management and cost reduction, Walmart was considering premium domestic material-handling brand with high performance trucks designed to reliably work longer even in harsh environments such as cold storage.
Walmart first met EP in 2011 and tried out a variety of pallet trucks selected elaborately by EP according to its specific needs of different store’s applications. One year later, Walmart started a formal cooperation with EP. The extraordinary performance of EP trucks and service has every reason to gain this trust. Because it provides more than just high-quality trucks in the industry, but also the custom solutions to help these trucks fully serve the function in the warehouses.
For major distribution centers of Walmart, EPT20-15ET is the most ideal pallet truck with its compact size and light weight. It can easily fit into small and narrow aisles. The particularity of super store industry asks for continuous working time over 16 hours, or 24 hours sometimes. To cater for such long working hours demands, EP installed this truck with side-pulling lead-acid battery exclusively for Walmart, along with two spare batteries on both sides and a dozen of charging piles, maximizing running time on two shifts. It also helps avoid the troubles of frequent charging. The lead-acid battery greatly increases safety and reduces the maintenance costs. As for other warehouses at the back of the stores with heavy duty but short distance applications, Walmart chooses EPT20-20WA as the best tool. It has a large load capacity of 2000kg and small turning radius, which can always come in handy when Walmart staff need to handle heavy beverage crates in confined space. Of course, there are situations where a pallet truck might fail to satisfy the requirements. When it comes to lifting and picking goods from higher shelving racks, a stable and flexible electric forklift would be better option. CPD20TV8 and CPD20FVD by EP are such forklifts typically featuring higher availability and productivity.
Besides the optimal products, EP has amazed the Walmart in many other ways. For example, it offers customized design scheme for their loading dock, as well as truck modification service to adjust to the cold storage application. As we all know, good products keep customers interested, but good after-sales service keeps them loyal. EP responds to the after-sales service requests whenever, wherever for customers promptly within two hours, and provides technical support within eight hours.
Walmart has operated more than 440 stores over four distribution centers in China including Wuhan, Tianjing, Jiaxing and Shenzhen. EP’s trucks have been widely used in every site, supporting the distribution and transportation at home and abroad such as Southeast Asia regions, helping solving all kinds of handling problems, even in a remote area like Ordos city. “Neither the remote regions nor the harsh weather can deter EP from delivering the industry-leading products and service to the customers, and that’s the EP spirit,” says sales director Wang from EP equipment.
It has been eight years since Walmart cooperated with EP. In the meantime, these remarkable results of the cooperation also attracted the great attention of other superstore brands like Yonghui and Carrefour who had signed contract with EP since 2018. Top products plus top service equals EP equipment. The trust and recognition of these international brands is a strong proof of EP’s leading productivity in electric pallet trucks. Moreover, it also serve as a positive motivation for further improvements.