Yarde Metals (Southington, Conn.), a division of Reliance Steeland Aluminum, is a metals processor and distributor specializing in odd and hard-to-find sizes of stainless steel, carbon steel, aluminum, copper and brass. With clients in the aerospace industry, entertainment industry and custom vehicle industry—namely Orange County Choppers—the expectations of Yarde’s clients are diverse and unrelenting.
Employees move more than 2,000 shipments a day. The company frequently finds itself needing to relocate loads that others would consider too big, too awkward or too heavy.
When you move 750,000 pounds of metal a day, the reliability of your lift trucks weighs heavily on your mind. Craig Yarde, co-owner, has relied on Toyota lift trucks for more than nine years. Yarde opted for the 6,000-pound and 10,000-pound internal combustion models based on dependability, ergonomics and the lift trucks’ ability to lift appropriate materials.
“From the time the materials are received to the time they are shipped, they are rarely touched by anything other than a lift truck,” says Doug Jones, facilities manager. “We have 40 trucks in our
Connecticut facility and 20 others in our additional facilities. Some of them are 15 years old, and they are still providing service as reliable and safe as the day we bought them.”
Yarde Metals is close to being the business that never sleeps. Its 350 Connecticut employees work 24 hours a day, five days a week. It has an additional 250 employees around the globe.
“It is highly unlikely that we would have been able to grow the business the way we have if we could not rely on our lift trucks to get the job done,” says Jones. “Rather than worry about whether we have the right vehicles in place to do the job or about replacing equipment that doesn’t work, we have been able to concentrate on growing the business. It’s been a huge relief, and frankly, a huge contributor to our bottom line.”
