Mail transport vehicles will usually hold two types of cages, both containing mail sacks. The tall collapsible cage, known as a yorkie is open fronted and the sacks are held in place with strong canvas straps, it also has castors and is rolled onto the vehicle manually. The other cage is open-topped and will usually be loaded onto the transport with a powered pallet truck or a fork-lift truck.

Smaller food delivery vans use a racking system consisting of trays slotted into the holders on both sides of the van’s interior. The trays can be removed to make it easier for the driver to simply pull the tray out and use it to carry the goods into the shop or supermarket.

There are a great many storage accessories purpose made for engineers and mechanics that need a van to enable them to reach their customers. Storage cabinets, vice holders, gas bottle holders and shelves, for example. These units are usually sturdily made to withstand the stress of constant use.

The versatile and highly manoeuvrable powered pallet trucks have a seating area from which the operator steers the truck around the warehouse. The driver will pick up a steel open-topped cage containing sacks of mail and deliver them to a sorting area on the shop-floor from which the mail handlers then sort the sacks into empty cages around them according to the area they are to be mailed. All cages have space beneath them for the forks.

The fork-lift truck with its high weight-bearing capacity and vertical reach is used to stack the cages around the centre, this time on wooden pallets to ensure they are safely held in position. However, the smaller and lighter pallet truck is normally used to load and unload the delivery vehicles. Generally speaking, the pallet and fork-lift trucks’ batteries will hold a charge of roughly ten hours, enabling them to be in constant use throughout a working shift.

To ensure safety in areas where fork-lift trucks are in operation, warehouse pedestrians are required to wear high-visibility vests at all times, and steel toe-capped boots or shoes. In a typical mail processing centre, walkways are clearly marked out and workers should not stray from them without carefully checking for trucks first.

A light, upright sack truck, usually constructed from aluminium, has a capacity of only seven kilograms, but is simply ideal for carrying stacked boxes or sacks. It will tilt back onto two wheels when being moved and some models have folding base plates, so they can be easily stored on large shelves. The sack truck is versatile and may even be used at home, in the garage or the garden.

Hand pallet trucks are ideal for use in small warehouses. The truck has two forks which are inserted under the pallet and the handle is used as a hydraulic pump to lift the forks and the pallet onto the forks wheels. Before moving, it is essential to ensure its load is evenly distributed across the pallet. To apply the brake, simply return the handle to an upright position. A foot pedal releases the air from the piston, dropping the pallet into its new position. With a typical load capacity of two thousand five hundred kilograms, the hand pallet truck is often a worthwhile investment.