About Us
Bill Bennett Engineering Ltd was established in 1969. Initially, Bill Bennett was a man in a van offering agricultural machinery repairs. This grew to machinery sales and in 1973 becoming the first importer of Fendt tractors from Germany, remaining the UK importer until 1991.
The truck mounted forklift connection started back in the early 1980’s while a local village friend Jim Wilkie started importing the Kooi Aap, the first truck-mounted forklift, from Holland. The advantages of using a truck mounted forklift were clear even in these early years. Jim promoted the concept before another importer took on the franchise.
Kooi was the family name and Aap is monkey in Dutch, the forklift was thought to look like a Monkey hanging from the back of a truck.
A few years later, Kooi Aap, still a family firm, recontacted Jim asking if he knew anyone that might want to be their importer. Jim suggested the opportunity to us and after a some investigation and a factory visit we became the importer in 1991.
Bill Bennett Engineering Ltd began promoting the Kooi Aap concept, self unloading with a truck mounted forklift was known to very few UK operators at the time.
A sales force and demonstration team travelled the country doing private demos and attending trade shows.
New applications were constantly developed as the benefits of a truck mounted forklift were seen and understood
Over the years the truck mounted forklift concept developed and began to be a commonly used solution in the transport and logistics industry.
Having been involved with the truck mounted forklift industry from the concept stage, Bill Bennett Engineering developed all the services and knowledge to support this type of equipment.
This knowledge has benefited many logistic operations by helping the design of transport systems using truck mounted forklifts. Many UK truck mounted forklift applications, that are common today, were started by the Bennett team back in the 90’s, working with customers and a concept, to find solutions to logistics problems.
At the end of 2003 the company became the UK importer for the Palfinger Crayler range of truck mounted forklifts. This opened a new opportunity to work with the biggest name in truck mounted unloading systems. A combination of market knowledge and high quality design and engineering created a leading edge for truck mounted forklifts.
2023 marks twenty years of Bennett working with Palfinger truck mounted forklifts. Bennett are, and remain, the number 1 one stop shop for all your truck mounted forklift requirements.