Barloworld Handling’s Dan Vicini sees future opportunity for box handling equipment in US Southeast and Gulf ports.By George Lauriat, AJOTDan Vicini, who is Barloworld Handling’s account manager-jumbo truck sales, principally container handlers, has been in the business since the 1970s, and says he’s never seen market conditions as “slow” as those currently impacting the port sector. “It’s changed dramatically with the recession, I personally have never seen it so slow,” Vicini noted in an interview with the AJOT. Nevertheless, Vicini is optimistic adding, “We expect in a couple of years the [container] market will turn and the need to improve box density at the container terminals will spur demand for handling equipment.” Vicini covers the US Southeast (Wilmington/Morehead NC to Mobile, Alabama) for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Barloworld Handling, a subsidiary of South Africa’s multinational HYPERLINK “http://www.barloworld.com/“Barloworld Ltd. Barloworld Handling is a dealer that principally sells and/or leases Hyster equipment. Hyster is part of NACCO Industries Inc., a US equipment manufacturer based in Cleveland Ohio, which employs 10,600 people worldwide. In fact, Barloworld Handling is arguably the largest independent dealer of Hyster lift trucks in the US. The equipment runs the gamut from powered pallet trucks to container handlers and all their load attachments. The equipment is used in a diverse number of industries, including warehouses and DCs (Distribution Centers), rail yards, manufacturers and ports. As they say in the real estate industry, the three most important business attributes are location, location and location. To a degree that is also true for equipment sales. The growth of boxports in the US southeast over the past decade has buoyed container equipment sales. “We’ve had great success in the Southeast and Gulf. The Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) has been a great customer. Jacksonville is taking off, and Charleston [South Carolina] is also in the process of building a new box terminal.” The malaise in the box business has dampened equipment sales but one bright spot is that the surplus of inventory means that a dealer can deliver the hardware nearly immediately rather than being left in a long queue. Vicini says, “Rentals have been very good.” The leasing side of the business is very important to Barloworld Handling. “We’re in a rent-to-sell, business,” Vicini explained. “Often a customer will lease a piece of equipment for say three years and eventually end up buying the units.” Financing for the equipment, is available through the manufacturers’ (Hyster) own capital groups. Barloworld Ltd. formerly handled equipment financing but a few years ago decided to focus on the primary business of selling equipment rather than duplicating a role that equipment manufacturers already provided. Another business string that has gone well in the recession is retrofits. Older trucks are being retrofitted to add additional while terminal operators wait for the box market to emerge from the recession before jumping into new equipment. SERVICE MAKES A DIFFERENCE Vicini says that Barloworld Handling is really a service industry and that for the company “service is a differentiator.” When it comes to heavy container handling equipment, there “is very little bad product,” so training and service are the value added features that separate one dealer from another. To address that aspect of the business, Barloworld has some thirty full service branches and five training facilities in the Southeast. Keeping the equipment running smoothly after it’s been sold to a port is important in a number of ways. Equipment downtime is extremely costly to the port’s ability to maintain container flow throughout the yard. And lower port performance could lead to a box carrier defection to a rival port – and this can snowball as steamship lines have a tendency to play follow the leader. Although it hasn’t happened yet in a US port, Vicini explained that a