Saturday, September 26, 2026
Don't fix it if it ain't broke

Still Running / Tools

Came with the building, never missed a service

A 1956 Toyota forklift at the Toyota museum in Nagoya, Japan. Not a Raymond, and not the one in the story.
A 1956 Toyota forklift at the Toyota museum in Nagoya, Japan. Not a Raymond, and not the one in the story. Photo: Mytho88, CC BY-SA 3.0. The real one is in the original post.

This Raymond lift came with a building Grandpa bought in the late 1970s. A mechanic later went over it and called it perfect, and his guess was that it was built in the 1940s. It hasn't missed a scheduled maintenance check since Grandpa took over. It has one job. The shop uses it to put stainless pipe and tubing up on stock racks more than 30 feet high and bring it back down, and it isn't run hard. One of the grandkids works there and says it's a squirrelly thing to drive.

Just under 3,500 hours on it. The shop's much newer forklifts both have 5,500 plus.

Retold from a post on r/BuyItForLife. Read the original

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