Why We Don't Buy Used Lithium-Ion Trucks... (Yet)
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We buy a lot of used electric kit: counterbalance trucks, reach trucks and pedestrian machines. If it runs on a lead-acid battery, we can usually tell you what it's worth quite quickly. Lithium-ion is a different story. We're offered used Li-ion trucks regularly, and for now we turn most of them down.
That isn't because we think lithium is a bad technology. It isn't. It charges faster, it doesn't need topping up with water, and you don't need a battery room for charging. It's easy to see why so many fleets have switched. The problem is what happens when those trucks come off fleet. At the moment, the used market for lithium machines doesn't really work. Here's why.
The charger
Lithium chargers are expensive, often high-output units, regularly hard-wired into the site's mains supply by an electrician. When a fleet comes off lease or gets replaced, the trucks are collected, but the chargers often aren't. Nobody wants to pay an electrician to disconnect them, they are lost or damaged. So they stay on the wall, or get scrapped when the site is cleared.
That matters far more with lithium than with lead-acid. A lithium battery and its charger talk to each other through the battery management system (BMS). In many cases you can't just plug in any charger with the right voltage. Without the matching charger, a truck we buy could be a truck nobody can charge. And buying a new one from the original supplier, if we can buy one, can easily wipe out what the machine is worth.
You can't see inside a lithium battery
With lead-acid, we know what we're looking at. We can check the specific gravity, run a discharge test, and look over the cells and connectors. A tired lead-acid battery usually shows that it's tired.
Lithium doesn't give that away. The real picture sits inside the BMS: the state of health (how much of its original capacity is left), cycle count, cell balance, and any history of deep discharges, overheating or faults. Getting at that usually needs the manufacturer's diagnostic software, the right cable and often a dealer login. As an independent trade buyer, we usually don't have that access.
That leaves us guessing about the most valuable part of the machine. On a lithium truck, the battery is a big share of what the machine is worth. If we can't tell whether it's at 95% or 65% of its original capacity, we can't price it fairly. We also won't sell a machine on to a dealer if we can't describe it accurately.
Will anyone be supporting it in ten years?
A lot of the lithium trucks and batteries arriving in the UK come from Chinese manufacturers. A few years ago, most people here had never heard of many of them. To be fair, some are huge, well-established businesses building good kit. Others are newer, and the UK importers and distributors behind them can change.
A used truck is only worth something if it can still be supported after its first owner has finished with it. That raises questions we can't answer yet:
- Will the BMS software still be supported?
- Will replacement cells, modules or control boards be available?
- Will anyone still hold the wiring diagrams and service information?
- Will the UK importer still be trading?
If any of those answers could be no, the second and third owners carry all the risk. The price has to reflect that, and at the moment that often makes the deal unworkable.
The cost at the end
Every battery needs disposing of eventually, and lithium is harder and more expensive to deal with than lead-acid. Lead-acid has a long-established recycling route and some scrap value. Lithium packs need specialist recyclers, and moving them falls under dangerous goods rules, which are stricter still if a pack is damaged or faulty.
Under UK rules, the battery "producer" is usually the first business to import the battery, or the truck it's fitted to. That producer has to take end-of-life lithium batteries back free of charge (UKMHA, via Machinery Market). On paper, that covers it. In practice, after a truck has changed hands two or three times, the importer may have gone and the paperwork may be lost. There is a last-resort route where an end user can ask another producer to take a battery back (NetRegs). But it's not something we'd want to rely on. If we're left holding a dead pack, the cost and hassle could easily land on us, or on the dealer we sold the truck to.
A few more things that give us pause
- Batteries paired to the truck. Some lithium packs are matched to the truck's controller in software. Swapping a battery, or clearing a fault, can mean going back to the manufacturer or their dealer.
- Warranties that don't follow the machine. Lithium battery warranties are often tied to the first owner, a service contract or charging conditions. A second owner may have no cover at all.
- Storage and insurance. Holding used lithium packs of unknown condition in a yard raises fire-risk questions, and insurers are asking more about them.
- Export. Many of our customers are exporters. Shipping lithium-powered machines means dangerous goods paperwork, extra cost and, in some markets, extra questions at the other end.
What would change our mind
We want to buy lithium trucks. They'll soon make up a big share of the electric fleet, and a healthy used market is good for everyone, including the people buying new. Here's what would get us there:
- The charger travels with the truck. Manufacturers, lessors and fleet managers should treat truck and charger as one asset, with disconnection and return of the charger built into every off-hire. A common charging standard across brands would be even better.
- An industry-standard health figure. Something like the car world's move to quoting battery state of health: a simple percentage of new capacity that anyone can read without dealer software. Ideally it comes printed on an end-of-lease report.
- Open diagnostic access. Independent buyers, dealers and engineers need a way to read battery data and fault history without being locked out.
- Long-term support commitments. Manufacturers and importers should commit to parts and service information for a set number of years, with a plan for what happens if the UK importer changes.
- A clear end-of-life route that doesn't depend on tracking down the original importer years later.
Europe is already moving this way. From 18 February 2027, industrial batteries over 2 kWh placed on the EU market must carry a digital battery passport, reached by a QR code. Depending on the battery type, the passport has to record its state of health, charge cycles and things like accidents or other damaging events (Z2Data). Batteries already on the market before that date don't need one (BD Emerson), and the rule doesn't apply directly in Great Britain. But manufacturers selling into Europe will have to build that data in anyway.
Where that leaves us
For now, we're generally not buying used lithium-ion trucks. That will change as the market matures, and we'd rather judge a machine on its merits than turn it away. If you have a lithium truck that comes with its charger, a battery health report and a clear service history, talk to us. Meanwhile, lead-acid electric, diesel and LPG machines remain the core of what we do, and we're always buying.