This Shanghai-based company builds body-in-white welding lines for some of China’s biggest automakers — handling everything from design and manufacturing to commissioning — and employs close to 800 people. Its customers include SAIC-GM, SAIC Volkswagen, and SAIC Passenger Vehicle. Raw materials and semi-finished assemblies are constantly being moved between its production halls all day long.
For years, that job belonged to forklifts. Today it belongs to one battery powered transfer cart.
The machine is a BWP trackless transfer cart with a 4,200 x 2,500 mm deck. It runs on storage batteries, steers 360° on the spot, and is driven by wireless remote control. One cart now covers several transfer routes across the plant.
If you manage heavy in-plant transport, the reasons behind this change are worth reading. They apply to most welding, stamping and assembly plants.
A regular forklift is rated around 5 tons. That works for pallets. It doesn’t work well for welded sub-assemblies, fixtures and steel stock that have to travel from one hall to the next.
A forklift carries its load in the air, and on a long run across a yard that is a tipping risk. In a crowded shop floor it is slow, and it needs a certified operator. Diesel and LPG units blow exhaust straight into the welding bays. None of this is new; plant managers live with it until they find a way out.
The order came with a short list:
Nothing exotic on paper. The routes, though, run through open yards, up ramps and over different floor surfaces. The cart had to climb a ramp at full load and keep moving where a forklift would slip. Those two points decided everything.
For reference, the BWP standard range covers 1 to 200 tons, deck sizes from 2,000 x 1,500 mm to 6,000 x 3,000 mm, and speeds of 0 to 20 m/min. This cart sits somewhere in the middle.
The following video shows the shipping process of the BWP trackless transfer cart:
Rail transfer carts are the classic answer to heavy in-plant transport. They are also a commitment: pour the foundation, bolt down the track, and the route is fixed for years.
This plant’s routes changed every time a welding line was added or re-laid. A trackless transfer cart follows the floor wherever the floor goes. If the route moves next month, the cart moves with it. No track to rip up, no civil work to redo.
That flexibility, plus the battery drive, is what settled the choice.
The plant’s logistics team put it plainly:
“We run several production workshops, and raw materials and semi-finished products move between them constantly. After we brought in the trackless transfer cart, a single cart covers multiple transfer routes. The wireless remote control makes it flexible and easy to operate.”
On a full load, this heavy duty transfer cart pulls up the workshop ramps without trouble. The 4.2 m deck carries more parts per trip than a forklift can in the same run, so the number of trips drops, one operator handles the whole route, and the running cost is mostly electricity. No fuel, no exhaust, no hydraulic mast to service.
The yard surface is not a showroom floor. It is worn concrete, painted steel and expansion joints, and the cart keeps moving over all of it at full load. Strong traction and good adaptation to plant road surfaces were in the brief; in service, they deliver.
The same BWP electric transfer cart family turns up where loads are heavier and routes are longer. Aerospace plants use it to move aircraft wing assemblies. Shipyards move hull sections, steel mills move coils and plates, wind turbine makers move blades and hubs. The trackless design stays the same; the deck, the capacity and the control system get built around the job.
Forklifts keep their place for stacking and short moves. For moving heavy loads between workshops on a battery, with one operator and no rails, a trackless transfer cart is a different class of machine.
If your plant is at that point, send us three numbers — deck size, load weight and route length — plus a note on the floor conditions. We will quote a transfer cart built around your working conditions.Contact us!
