The nursery and garden center business although seasonal is extremely busy from spring till the end of fall. Keeping up with the demands of both commercial and residential landscaping needs in such a short period of time leaves no room for inefficiency or error. One of the largest nursery and garden center business chains in South West Ontario was looking for innovated ways to serve customers faster and more effectively. As the stone and aggregate sales depended on weight for transaction calculations, the current practice was for the lift truck to pick up the product drive it to a floor scale, write down the weight and the customer then takes it to the cash for pricing and payment. Examining their current process the consensus was that it was not allowing them to serve customers efficiently. Each store had 4 forklifts and floor scales and still customer would have to wait for lengthy periods of time before being served.

Looking for recommendations we arrived at the conclusion that the SkidWeigh ED2-Elite and was the only lift truck scale that would allow this garden center leader to raise the bar in customer satisfaction. The SkidWeigh ED2-Elite’s compact size, ability to work in harsh applications, and extremely reliable accuracy allowed them to redefine the weighing process and improve the customer experience. Floor scales were removed altogether and now weighing could be done at the point of product in the yard right in front of customer. In addition, the Bluetooth printer capability of the SkidWeigh ED2-Elite allowed each operator to print to a mobile printer attached to their belt and with the push of one button produce a receipt for he customer. Eliminated was travel time from product storage to floor scale, manually writing the weight on paper and rounding back to find the customer so they can take the papers inside. As the aggregate yard is quite large in space to store and display product, it was calculated that time savings per fulfilled order was in excess of 6 minutes per order. Less waiting lines mean happier customers.

Some of the key advantages of the SkidWeigh ED2-Elite that drove the decision had to do with the simplicity of usage. The system installed in approximately 2 hours and calibrated in less than 2 minutes. The ‘Lift-N-Weigh’ operation principal was well received by the operators and it required no buttons to push or additional processes to adopt. On top of this unique simplicity is the fact that the best in class accuracy is maintained without ongoing maintenance or calibration. This allowed them to focus on their core business. As well as the residential business the addition of the SkidWeigh ED2-Elite on the lift trucks allowed them to on the spot weigh commercial out going trucks. Now capacity restrictions could be respected and safely loaded much quicker than before. Finally from a safety standpoint this garden center hires and trains new operators for the season. With the built in overload notification on the SkidWeigh ED2-Elite it provides peace of mind that capacity ratings of the lift trucks will be respected at all times.