Electric Forklifts
Best for: Indoor work on finished floors, and anywhere noise or fumes are a problem. Lithium-ion models charge during breaks, which suits sites running more than one shift.
View the rangePart of our UK forklift hire service, delivered from eight depots on our own lorries. In Oxford we also offer cherry picker hire, scissor lift hire and access platform hire.
Your local depot
Hire in Oxford, from our Thames Valley centre
Oxford is looked after by our West service centre at William House on the Heron Industrial Estate, Spencers Wood, just south of Reading and a few minutes from junction 11 of the M4. It covers Oxfordshire together with Berkshire, Surrey and Wiltshire. Hire machines for the county are prepared there, go out on our own transport and come back to the same yard, and the centre keeps a parts store on site alongside its mobile engineers.
Calling 0118 988 8878 puts you straight through to the Spencers Wood team, not a national call centre, Monday to Friday from 8am to 5pm, and the emergency breakdown callout line runs 24 hours a day. Across the company, 92 out of every 100 callouts we attend are fixed on the first visit.
Most customers in this patch run a small number of machines and have no maintenance staff of their own, so the relationship with the engineer matters more than the badge on the truck. The same engineers come back to the same sites, which means less time spent explaining the building and more time spent on the machine.
Machines for the job
Which forklift for Oxford work
Most Oxford sites need one of six kinds of truck, and the choice comes down to the load, the height, the aisle and the floor. Electric counterbalance trucks suit laboratories, research campuses and hospital and university stores, where the work is indoors on a finished floor. Diesel counterbalance trucks on pneumatic tyres do the outdoor work on builders' merchants' yards and construction sites, and LPG trucks cover the sites that go in and out of a building in the same shift.
The distribution sheds at Bicester and along the A34 work to height, which is what reach trucks are for, and where an aisle is too tight to turn a conventional truck a Flexi articulated truck does the same job. For goods-in, stores rooms and loading from the back of a lorry, powered pallet trucks and stackers are often all a site needs.
Attachments, access platforms and industrial cleaning machinery can go out on the same hire as the truck. Tell us the load, the height and the surface, and we will come back with the machine that fits.
Diesel Forklifts
Best for: Heavy outdoor work, yards and rough ground, usually on pneumatic tyres.
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LP Gas Forklifts
Best for: Sites that work inside and outside in the same shift. A balance of power and flexibility, and can run indoors where there is adequate ventilation.
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Reach Trucks for Sale and Hire
Best for: Racked warehouses that stack to height. Tell us your racking height, aisle width and heaviest pallet.
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Articulated Forklifts
Best for: Aisles too narrow to turn a counterbalance truck, and awkward or non-standard loads.
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Powered Pallet Trucks
Best for: Goods-in, loading from the back of a lorry and moving pallets at floor level.
View the rangeWhere we work
Oxford estates and the work they do
Around the city the work changes from one estate to the next. Oxford Business Park and the Horspath estates at Cowley mix offices, light industry and manufacturing supply, and Osney Mead by the station runs trade counters and light industrial units. North of the city, Kidlington and Langford Lane by the airport mix light industry and storage, which suits a small electric fleet with a pallet truck alongside.
Down the A34, Abingdon Business Park mixes offices and light industry, while Milton Park and Culham are science and technology campuses, where clean, quiet electric equipment is the right answer and floors are finished. Bicester, around junction 9 of the M40, is distribution: bigger sheds working to height, where reach trucks and a well-kept warehouse fleet earn their keep.
Further out, Didcot, Wantage and Grove sit on the same A34 and A417 runs, and Banbury in the north of the county carries distribution and manufacturing around junction 11 of the M40. Both ends of the county are worked from Spencers Wood, so a Banbury site and an Abingdon site are quoted, delivered and serviced by the same team.
Witney and the west of the county are covered from the same centre, and so are the M4 towns beyond it. A business with sites in Oxford and the Thames Valley, or on both sides of the county boundary, deals with one depot, one phone number and one set of engineers.
- Oxford Business Park, Cowley
- Horspath Industrial Estate
- Osney Mead Industrial Estate
- Langford Lane, Kidlington
- Abingdon Business Park
- Milton Park and Culham, on the A34
- Bicester, M40 junction 9
- Witney
With every machine
What comes with an Oxford hire
A hire from the West centre comes looked after. The mobile engineers who carry out forklift servicing and repairs in Oxford maintain the hire machines too, and book the LOLER thorough examination: at least every twelve months for a truck lifting loads, and every six where it lifts people. The hire fleet is CFTS accredited.
Most of what goes wrong with a small fleet is not the truck itself. It is a traction battery that has been charged badly, tyres left past the point where they damage the floor, racking that has been clipped once too often, or an inspection that has quietly fallen due. This centre gives advice on all of it, including batteries and chargers and what LOLER and PUWER require of you, and it costs nothing to ask.
Operator training covers novice, refresher and conversion courses, run on your site or at the centre, and it can be booked to land alongside a hire so the truck arrives with certificated drivers ready for it. The parts store at the centre supplies tyres and forklift attachments, supplied and fitted, so a worn set of tyres or a missing side shift is dealt with on the same visit rather than on a second one.
- 44Years supplying and servicing handling equipment
- 8Regional service centres across the UK
- 3,500Machines under our care nationwide
- 92%Of callouts fixed on the first visit
Hire terms
Hire terms and prices
Hire runs from a single day through to long-term contract hire, from £85 a week. The rate moves with the machine, its lifting capacity and lift height, any attachments, and how long you keep it: longer hires cost less per week. Short-term hire covers a peak, a project or a truck off the road, and emergency hire is there for the day something has gone wrong.
If you would rather not think about it at all, contract hire and fleet management put the truck, its servicing and its statutory inspections together in one monthly payment. If hire stops making sense, we sell new and used machines and take part exchange on your old truck, working or not. All prices are ex VAT.
The quickest way to a price is a call to Spencers Wood with the heaviest load, how high it goes, the narrowest aisle, the floor or ground it runs on and roughly how long you need the machine. With those five answers we can quote the right truck first time, and if you are not sure of one of them, we will come and look at the site.
| Option | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Short-term hire | From a single day, from £85 a week |
| Emergency hire | Cover when a truck of your own stops |
| Contract hire | The truck, its servicing and its statutory inspections can be brought together in one monthly payment |
| Fleet management | The same across several sites |
| Buy new or used | Part exchange on your old truck, working or not |
All prices are ex VAT.
The advice around the machine
Acclaim Handling, West Service Centre
Your service centre
Your Thames Valley service centre
The West centre is one of Acclaim's eight regional service centres. Acclaim has been supplying and looking after handling equipment since 1982 and is still independent, which means the machine we recommend is the one that suits the job. We are an exclusive dealer for STILL, Hyundai and Lonking, and we also supply Flexi articulated trucks, Genie access equipment and Kärcher cleaning machinery.
It is a mixed patch: business parks and light industry, distribution along the motorways and older warehousing further out. The centre has always worked the same way, with local service backed by a national company and a team that takes the trouble to know its customers. The same people handle sales, hire and service, so one call can cover a new or used truck, a hire and a service contract.
William House, Heron Industrial Estate, Spencers Wood, Reading RG7 1PJ
Ask for a hire quote
Machines available to hire
Machines in stock now with a weekly hire rate. Open one for its photos and full specification.
Used2024 LONKING CPYD30-XL
TypeGasCapacity3,000 kgLift height4,700 mm
Hire from £105 / week View machine
Used2024 HYUNDAI 35LN-9A
TypeGasCapacity3,500 kgLift height6,000 mm
Hire from £105 / week View machine
Used2023 LONKING LG25GLT
TypeGasCapacity2,500 kgLift height4,700 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2023 LONKING LG18B
TypeElectricCapacity1,800 kgLift height4,750 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2023 LONKING LG18BE
TypeElectric 3-Wheel 48 voltCapacity1,800 kgLift height4,700 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2022 LONKING LG18B
TypeElectricCapacity1,800 kgLift height4,700 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2022 HYUNDAI 15L-7M
TypeGasCapacity1,500 kgLift height4,000 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2022 HYUNDAI 18L-7M
TypeGasCapacity1,800 kgLift height4,500 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2022 HYUNDAI 18L-7M
TypeGasCapacity1,800 kgLift height4,500 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2022 STILL RX20 1.6P
TypeElectricCapacity1,600 kgLift height3,480 mm
Hire from £95 / week View machine
Used2021 HYUNDAI 35DN-9V
TypeDieselCapacity3,500 kgLift height4,500 mm
Hire from £105 / week View machine
Used2021 HYUNDAI 35DN-9V
TypeDieselCapacity3,500 kgLift height4,500 mm
Hire from £105 / week View machine
FAQ's
Our West service centre at Spencers Wood, near Reading, which covers Oxfordshire along with Berkshire, Surrey and Wiltshire. Calling 0118 988 8878 puts you straight through to the team that handles your site, Monday to Friday from 8am to 5pm, and the emergency breakdown callout line runs 24 hours a day.
Yes: see forklift servicing in Oxford. The same West centre team looks after hired trucks and carries out LOLER thorough examinations.
The heaviest load and its size, how high it has to go, the narrowest aisle the truck has to work in, the floor or ground it will run on, whether it works indoors, outdoors or both, and roughly how long you need it. With those we can put the right machine on the quote first time. If you are not sure of the answers, say so and we will look at the site.
Yes. Scissor lifts, boom lifts and mast lifts, and industrial cleaning machinery such as scrubber dryers and sweepers, can go out on the same hire as the forklift. Mention them when you call and they go on the same quote.
Yes. Acclaim is an exclusive dealer for STILL, Hyundai and Lonking and runs a used fleet as well, and we take part exchange on your old truck. Contract hire sits in between, and can bring the truck, its servicing and its statutory inspections together in one monthly payment.
Arrange forklift hire in Oxford
Call our Thames Valley service centre direct on 0118 988 8878, call head office on 01708 861 414, or email hello@acclaimhandling.com. The form above reaches the same team.
8 Regional Depots
- Head Office South East
Rainham, Essex
View Depot Details & Get Directions - East Anglia Service Centre
Rackheath, Norfolk
View Depot Details & Get Directions - Midlands Service Centre
Rugby, Warwickshire
View Depot Details & Get Directions - Liverpool Service Centre
Prescot, Merseyside
View Depot Details & Get Directions - South Coast Centre
Cosham, Portsmouth
View Depot Details & Get Directions - East Service Centre
Spalding, Lincolnshire
View Depot Details & Get Directions - West Service Centre
Spencers Wood, Reading
View Depot Details & Get Directions - Southern Service Centre
Chatham, Kent
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