The Rebuild Site is a community interest company that is encouraging the construction industry to dismantle rather than demolish so that used, excess, and nearly new materials can be used in community projects.
Loading and unloading materials was a challenge for the Rebuild Site. The new counterbalance truck replaces an ageing forklift that had caught fire.
Rebuild director Emma Porter had spent long enough in the construction industry to know that, although the industry has done much to prevent surplus construction materials going to landfill, they are still far too likely to be placed in skips rather than be put to their most valuable purpose.
"My day job is working with a family contracting firm in Cumbria, an area that's been hit by a lot of floods over the past few years," Porter explained. "We're asked to support a lot of local community projects with flood recovery and I was thinking ‘surely somebody can connect the dots here [between surplus materials and need] and do something about this'. For a long time ‘somebody' meant somebody else. Then I decided I was going to have a go."
Porter and a team came together to launch The Rebuild Site.
Storing, loading and offloading the donated and recovered materials was, however, always a sticking point for The Rebuild Site.
"Early on we got a little bit of funding to buy a second-hand forklift," explained Porter. "That was vital because the materials are heavy and our warehouse racking is three bays tall. We couldn't reach the third bay without a working forklift, but the old truck never really worked very well. One day I was driving it and thought I could smell burning. When I lifted the seat it was on fire. Not smoke; actual flame.
"It's been a real problem because we've had things on the third level of racking that we can't recover because the forklift has been down. We've lost sales because of it. It's really been holding us back. There have been times we have been unable to accept materials without a forklift and we've frequently had to handball materials on and off the trailer. A few months ago it broke again and I just thought ‘I can't deal with this anymore'.
"I emailed every forklift manufacturer I could find and Jungheinrich replied saying ‘we might be able to help'. When I got a call to say our counterbalance truck was in the workshop and was asked what colour we would like I realised this was actually happening."
The Rebuild Site team took delivery of their refurbished Jungheinrich forklift. "We've got a poster in the office that says ‘there's nothing as powerful as an idea that's found its day'," said Porter. "I think that's why The Rebuild Site works, but for it to work well we need the support of so many people: the construction industry, our brilliant volunteers, our partners - and now Jungheinrich. We really are so grateful for Jungheinrich's help. It's going to make such a difference, and not just with the loading and unloading; it will allow us to divert more materials from going to waste and enable us to make much better use of our space."