Used & Refurbished Forklifts with 400"+ Lift Height for Sale

A forklift capable of raising loads to 400 inches — over 33 feet — represents the extreme upper range of warehouse material handling equipment. These are not general-purpose machines. They are purpose-engineered for operations with very specific facility requirements and storage configurations that push the limits of what conventional equipment can service. If you are operating one of these machines or looking for one, you already understand the narrow operational context where they make sense. For everyone else, understanding what drives this requirement helps clarify whether your application genuinely needs this capability or whether a lower-reach machine would serve you equally well.

The primary application for 400-plus-inch lift height equipment is very narrow aisle (VNA) warehousing in high-clear-height facilities. A warehouse with 40 to 45 foot clear heights running floor-to-ceiling racking with 12 to 14 storage levels requires equipment that can reach the top position safely and accurately. Turret trucks and man-up order pickers configured for 400-plus-inch operation work in aisles as narrow as 5 to 6 feet, guided by rail or wire systems that eliminate the need for the operator to steer laterally. The storage density achievable in these configurations is among the highest in the industry.

Cold storage and refrigerated distribution operations are a particularly common home for high-reach equipment. Building tall rather than wide is more cost-effective in temperature-controlled environments because the volume of refrigerated space that needs to be maintained scales with cubic footage. A 40-foot clear height cold storage facility with 400-inch-capable turret trucks can store dramatically more product than a conventional rack configuration in the same footprint. The energy economics of vertical cold storage favor this approach strongly.

Third-party logistics operations and e-commerce fulfillment centers with extremely high SKU counts also use 400-plus-inch equipment in their highest-density facilities. The ability to store inventory floor-to-ceiling with selective access to any storage position through a single aisle pass is operationally valuable when you are managing hundreds of thousands of different items across a single facility.

On the refurbished market, 400-plus-inch lift height machines are among the rarest available. Very few operations run this equipment, which means very few machines enter the used market in any given year. The buyers who need these machines are sophisticated and typically have specific brand, model, and configuration requirements based on their existing infrastructure — guidance systems, charging equipment, and facility dimensions all constrain compatibility. Pricing for quality refurbished units in this category typically starts at $40,000 and runs substantially higher for full-featured, low-hour machines.

LiftWorks USA occasionally sources high-reach turret truck and VNA equipment. Call 805-601-7081 to discuss your specific requirements and current availability. We ship nationwide and regularly work with international buyers on specialized equipment.