A used forklift is like a used pickup truck with a criminal record: the hours are low, the paint is fresh, and the story is only as good as the person telling it. We buy, refurbish, and resell used forklifts at Nevada Industrial Trucks in Las Vegas, and over four decades we’ve developed a nine-point inspection that decides whether a truck goes on our lot or into the scrap queue. Buyers who run the same nine checks rarely get burned. Buyers who skip them usually meet us later — as a service call.

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Start with the hour meter, but don’t trust it alone. A diesel yard truck showing 2,400 hours could be honest — or could have a meter that was disconnected when the engine was rebuilt. Cross-check the meter against service records, engine condition, and wear on the pedal pads and seat. Hour meters run with the key, not with the work, and a high-hour truck that was maintained beats a low-hour truck that was ignored.

Next, pull the service records, and pay attention to what isn’t there. A truck with no records isn’t necessarily abused, but it shifts all the risk onto you. We ask for invoices, not a notebook: oil analysis, hydraulic filter changes, chain lubrication history. When a seller can show those, the price conversation gets easier for everyone.

Then walk to the mast and look up. Lift chains take more abuse than any other component, and they tell on a truck immediately. Kinked links, seized rollers, and rust-packed pins mean the truck worked hard and was loved little. Measure chain elongation if you can — stretch beyond about three percent of pitch is replacement territory — and watch the mast rollers for flat spots while the mast cycles. Mast work is some of the most expensive labor on a forklift, which is exactly why you’re checking.

Fourth: the forks themselves. Cracks hide at the heel where the blade curves into the shank, so buyers walk past them — but a cracked fork fails without warning under a load. Fork wear is measurable with a caliper; when the blade has worn more than ten percent of its original thickness, the fork’s lifting capacity is gone with it. Reject any truck with heel cracks. There is no repair worth trusting there.

Fifth, the frame and overhead guard. Look for weld repairs, especially around the mast mounts, the counterweight, and the overhead guard legs. A forklift that tipped and was straightened by torch and welding rod can look clean and still be bent in ways that show up as premature tire wear and mast shimming problems. Paint that’s fresher in patches than elsewhere usually means somebody was hiding repair work, not performing maintenance.

Sixth: the powertrain, matched to your duty. In the Southwest, we steer buyers toward propane and electric for used trucks — diesel holds value here but sees harder hours, and electric truck batteries deserve their own interrogation. On an electric, ask the battery’s age and whether it was watered; a dried-out battery on a Las Vegas dock is dead capacity that shows up as half-shift runtime. A load test tells you more in twenty minutes than a seller’s assurances will in twenty days.

Seventh: hydraulics. Cycle the mast, tilt the carriage, and hold a load at height while you watch for drift. A mast that sinks under a static load is leaking past cylinder seals or the control valve, and seal work on a three-stage mast is a quoted-in-days job, not a quoted-in-minutes one. Check under the truck for weeping hoses and around the pump for misted oil. Clean hydraulic oil is cheap evidence of a cared-for truck.

Eighth: tires and brakes, together, because they both carry the same story. Solid cushion tires wear down to the point where the truck rides hard and stops longer; check the remaining rubber against the wear line on the sidewall. Pneumatic tires tell you where the truck worked — chunking from dock edges, cupping from hard braking. Brake pedals that pulse or pull usually mean contaminated linings from a leaking axle seal, which is another line item to negotiate with.

Ninth and last: put it to work before you agree on a price. Any seller who won’t let you run the truck under load is telling you something. Load it to about seventy percent of the data plate rating, lift, tilt, travel, turn, and stop. Listen for whining in the pump, grinding in the wheels, and clunking in the mast. Check that the data plate matches the attachments actually bolted to it — a side-shifter changes the capacity math, and the plate has to say so. Under OSHA’s powered industrial truck standard at 29 CFR 1910.178, a truck that enters your fleet in unsafe condition is your liability from the first shift it runs, so the test drive isn’t a courtesy, it’s compliance.

One final habit worth more than any single check: buy the truck that matches the work, not the truck that matches the budget. A cushion-tire warehouse truck belongs on smooth concrete, not a Las Vegas gravel yard, and no inspection fixes a mismatch. When our team at Nevada Industrial Trucks evaluates a used forklift for our own lot, that fit question comes before the price — and it should for you too.

Tom Stakleff is the CEO/Founder of Nevada Industrial Trucks, a Las Vegas forklift sales, service, and rental company. He has spent more than 40 years in the material handling industry and can be reached at (702) 356-1533 or nevadaindustrialtrucks.com.