Where’s My Forklift? The Costly Walkie-Talkie Problem in Warehousing and Logistics

April 28, 2025//Warehousing/airports, asset tracking warehousing, location asset tracking warehousing, logistics, manufacturing

In today’s high-speed logistics and warehouse environments, the outdated reliance on walkie-talkies to locate forklifts creates costly inefficiencies. Lost equipment, delayed assignments, and poor communication can waste up to 30% of labor time, dragging down productivity and profits. Real-time location systems (RTLS) like Volan’s platform eliminate these gaps, offering instant visibility into forklift positions, task statuses, and operational flow. By replacing guesswork with real-time intelligence, warehouses can drastically reduce downtime, improve safety, and gain a major competitive edge.

In fast-paced logistics and warehouse environments, time is money, and inefficiencies are costly. One of the biggest operational challenges across distribution centers, fulfillment hubs, and industrial storage yards is surprisingly simple: locating a forklift.

Where’s My Forklift The Costly Walkie-Talkie Problem in Warehousing and Logistics

When a forklift is unaccounted for or delayed, the ripple effect across operations is immediate. Goods pile up. Orders get delayed. Employees waste time tracking down vehicles instead of doing the jobs they were hired for. In a world where every second counts, the age-old reliance on walkie-talkies to locate and dispatch forklifts doesn’t cut it anymore.

The Walkie-Talkie Bottleneck

Let’s break down a typical scene: a supervisor radios in for a forklift to move a pallet. The operator either doesn’t hear the call, is already handling another task, or isn’t in the correct zone. Minutes pass as teams scramble to determine who’s available and where the equipment is. Multiply that by dozens of daily forklift requests, and the wasted time and labor hours quickly add up.

“Warehouses are running multi-million-dollar operations with 1970s communication tools,” says Michael Bettua, CEO of Volan Technology. “It’s no surprise that things fall through the cracks when your only method of coordination is a walkie-talkie.”

The amount of time lost in a typical warehouse can vary, but studies consistently show that 20–30% of warehouse labor time is wasted due to inefficiencies like:

 📦 Common Sources of Lost Time

Cause Estimated Time Lost
Searching for equipment (e.g., forklifts) 10–15% of shift time
Poor communication/coordination 5–10%
Waiting for task assignments or equipment 5–10%
Manual tracking/paperwork errors 2-5%
Unoptimized travel paths Up to 25% of total movement time

Real-World Stats

  • A study by Intermec (Honeywell) found that a typical warehouse loses 3,000+ hours per year due to inefficiencies in locating assets and equipment.
  • According to the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC), travel time alone can account for over 50% of picking time, and often much of it is wasted due to poor layout or lack of real-time coordination.
  • Deloitte reports that warehouses operating without automation or real-time tracking see up to 30% lost productivity.

Beyond the delay, there’s also the cost of miscommunication. Forklifts are misrouted, inventory gets held up, and throughput slows. And the bigger the facility, the more chaotic the communication becomes.

Real-Time Location is the Missing Link

What if instead of relying on walkie-talkies and guesswork, you could instantly see the real-time location of every forklift in your facility, along with their status, task assignments, and utilization history? With location-based intelligence, you can.

Volan’s RTLS (Real-Time Location System) platform uses micro-location technology to track every forklift, pallet jack, and key equipment down to the meter. Supervisors can instantly identify idle vehicles, monitor task progress, and automatically dispatch the nearest available resource without a single radio call.

Operational Gains at Scale

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

  • Reduced downtime: No more searching for missing forklifts or waiting for radio replies.
  • Faster task assignment: Assign jobs based on proximity and availability, not guesswork.
  • Improved safety: Real-time awareness of forklift movements reduces collisions and enhances zone-based safety protocols.
  • Data-driven insights: Identify underused assets, peak usage times, and bottlenecks with detailed analytics.

“Location intelligence is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity,” says Bettua. “In operations, if you can’t see it, you can’t optimize it. And that’s where real savings and efficiency come from.”

In modern logistics, visibility with real-time location tracking is powerful. When you can see every moving piece of your operation in real time, you gain a competitive edge that no amount of walkie-talkie chatter can deliver.

To learn more about our Volan technology, please contact us.

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