Fork Truck GraveYard

No urban (or sub-urban for that matter) centre is without its scrap-yards. It is certainly not uncommon to drive by these places and see piles of vehicles waiting to be salvaged or ready to be crushed and melted down.

What make this location unusual is that this is where fork-lift trucks (or toe-lift trucks) come to die.

Another item quite common to these scrap yards are intimidating fencing to keep all the wrecks corralled. This fence shown from a business next door had an interesting blend of domestic wood-privacy and military-facility barbed-wire.

On the way onto the property I had come across an unexpected caché of nature still hanging on within the surrounding industrial wilderness. Upon my arrival, the ducks which where hanging out in the oddly-coloured pond took flight.

This general area is called the Bear Creek Wetland or the Ferndale swamp an is a Provincially Significant wetland and important ecosystem. The Barrie Collingwood Railway (BCRY) transected the wetland and just recently the Ferndale Drive Extension, was constructed through it. Evidence of beavers (estimated to be close to a hundred) may still be seen.

Anyway, back to the dead fork-lift trucks parked near this environmentally sensitive area. Most of the lift trucks appeared to have some level of decommissioning in that the large battery was removed (if electric-powered), the motor stripped and hydraulic lines drained.

I also found this interesting rack for salvaged for some of the large fork components. I had a tough time deciding whether it should be in colour showing the wonderful rainbow or in black'n'white to highlight the forms.

One irony I realised while on tour through the yard was that most (if not all) of the dozens (and dozens) of lift trucks here most likely had to be moved there by a larger lift truck. Given the heavy counterweights this may be a challenging task on the soft ground.

This scrap yard was by no means exclusive to just lift trucks but also had a small number of distantly-related cousins present. This Tennant industrial rider floor scrubber most likely provided hours of crazy joy-rides for factory workers when managers / supervisors went home.

The scrap yard was a riot of colour all unique to the various manufacturers whose machines were present. Of all the manufacturers such as Hyster, JLG, Caterpillar, Clark, Komatsu, Taylor, TCM, Mitsubushi, and Toyota, I am decidedly favouring the bile-green colour of Clark.


Although I am no expert in this field, it was fairly obvious that some of the equipment present were fairly dated. These much-earlier models had unfamiliar shapes and byzantine controls.










I am quite certain that, on a very still and quiet evening, one may hear the machines rusting here or even perhaps the vegetation straining against their roots to envelope these metal carcases.