CONTINUOUS PROLONGED
OPERATION

The Challenge

In late 2023, a major steel logistics hub in Shandong Province approached Yuli with a critical operational bottleneck. The facility — a sprawling 200,000-square-meter yard handling over 8,000 tons of steel coil daily — was running three shifts around the clock. Their existing fleet of mixed-brand forklifts, some over a decade old, was struggling to maintain pace. Overheating engines during summer months forced unscheduled cooldown periods, hydraulic system failures during peak night shifts caused cascading delays, and the maintenance team was overwhelmed with reactive repairs rather than preventive care.

The facility manager laid out a stark requirement: "We need a fleet that can run 22 hours a day, with only two one-hour windows for refueling and inspection. We cannot afford another summer of breakdowns." The ambient temperature in the yard regularly exceeded 42°C in July, and the dust from steel handling operations was clogging air filters at twice the expected rate.

The steel logistics yard in Shandong — operating 24/7 with ambient temperatures exceeding 42°C in summer.

Assessment & Solution Design

Yuli dispatched a three-person assessment team led by Zhang Wei, who spent two weeks embedded at the facility. The team instrumented the existing fleet with temporary data loggers — monitoring engine temperature, hydraulic pressure, duty cycles, and ambient conditions around the clock. The data revealed a pattern: the fleet's utilization peaked between 10 PM and 4 AM, precisely when ambient temperatures were still high from daytime heat soak, creating a dangerous overlap of peak demand and peak thermal stress.

The analysis also uncovered that 40% of unscheduled downtime was linked to just two failure modes: cooling system degradation and hydraulic hose fatigue. Armed with this data, the engineering team — led by Li Na — designed a fleet configuration that addressed each failure vector directly.

Telemetry data collected over two weeks revealed the dangerous overlap of peak demand and peak thermal stress during night shifts.

The proposed fleet configuration centered on the Yuli CPC30 and CPC50 diesel forklifts with a custom "Continuous Duty Package" — a factory-installed upgrade bundle that included a dual-circuit cooling system (oil-cooler plus oversized radiator), reinforced hydraulic hoses with stainless steel braiding, sealed electrical connectors rated to IP67, and a heavy-duty air filtration system with cyclonic pre-cleaners to handle the high-dust environment.

Implementation & On-the-Ground Adjustments

The first six units — four CPC30s and two CPC50s — were delivered in early 2024. Liu Qiang, Yuli's Head of Manufacturing, personally oversaw the commissioning at the Qingzhou factory before shipment, ensuring each unit passed a 72-hour continuous run test under simulated high-temperature conditions.

Within the first month, operators reported a significant improvement: engine temperature gauges remained stable even during the hottest afternoon shifts. However, an unexpected issue emerged. The dust pre-cleaners, while effective, required daily emptying — a task that operators occasionally skipped during busy periods. Wang Ming, Yuli's Global Service Director, flew to the site and worked with the maintenance team to redesign the dust evacuation schedule, integrating it into the existing refueling routine so that no additional time was required.

Yuli CPC30 units undergoing commissioning at the steel logistics yard. Each unit was tested for 72 continuous hours before deployment.

Another adjustment came when the facility expanded its operations to include aluminum coil handling — a lighter but more delicate material. The existing forks were too aggressive for aluminum surfaces. Yuli's engineering team designed and delivered cushioned fork attachments within three weeks, allowing the same fleet to handle both steel and aluminum without damage.

Results & Cost Outcome

Six months after deployment, the facility reported zero unscheduled downtime events related to cooling or hydraulic failures — compared to an average of 3.2 events per month with the previous fleet. The dual-circuit cooling system proved its worth during the 2024 summer, when ambient temperatures hit 44°C for three consecutive days; the Yuli fleet maintained full operational capacity throughout.

Six-month operational data: unscheduled downtime dropped from 3.2 events/month to zero, while fleet utilization increased significantly.

On the cost side, the facility manager reported that the investment in the Continuous Duty Package was recovered within 14 months through three primary savings channels. First, the elimination of unscheduled downtime saved an estimated 220 production hours per year. Second, the extended service intervals — oil changes at 500 hours instead of 250, hydraulic hose replacement at 2,000 hours instead of 1,000 — reduced annual maintenance costs. Third, the fuel efficiency of the electronically-controlled common-rail diesel engines delivered consistent fuel savings compared to the older mechanical-pump engines.

Perhaps most telling was the facility manager's decision in late 2024: he ordered an additional four CPC30 units to complete the fleet replacement, standardizing the entire operation on Yuli equipment. The standardized fleet simplified maintenance training, reduced spare parts inventory, and allowed the maintenance team to shift from reactive repairs to genuinely preventive work.