to answer some of the questions, the tilt leveler button as has been said will not help a good driver. But that is not all it does, try this on an SAS truck with no load for safety reasons. With the mast tilted back past vertical. Lift the forks to the top, and power them against the stop untill the relief valve blows, now tilt forward, the mast won't go past vertical, lower the forks a little bit, now it will tilt fully forward. This is part of the SAS safety feature to stop operators tilting forward with aload at height. If you look at the mast you will see a load sensor in the hydraulic line that weighs the lload and a switch that signals forks over a set height. The swing lock cylinder on the steer axel should be checked by the technician on a service, he has to measure the spring lenght on an accumalator that maintains pressure in the swing lock cylinder, if it is out of tolerance it has to be replaced. Error codes that come up on the dash in place of hours run indicate faults on the system on 7 series. The new 8's are different. Th active steering syncroniser brings the steering wheel spinner always back to the 8 0 clock position for driver comfort............this I must admit is a bit of bull **** but its there and is a selling point!

I train SAS systems operation and repair. The system is designed to fail in the safest condition and that would be a trapiziod. There is no way any one can state or would state that this system is operator proof, but is is the safest truck on the market when it comes to tip over. The SAS system is really 2 systems in one ,SAS and AMC. System of active stability and Actice Mast controls. This are computor monitored and controled systems. UnLike a lot of other systems that are just passive rubber systems. They are all better than we had 20 years ago but you get what you pay for.

Hello, i have just joined here, yes we have the new toyota forklifts at work, after assessing a few types, we chose toyota due to their systems, only complaint we had, was the tilt leveller button on top of the controls, yes it is in the way, as most drivers rest their hands on top of controls, these buttons would have been better to have underneath the controls, to be activated by thumb, and if you can drive, why do we need tilt leveller ??
our forklifts were fitted with canopies after we assessed them, if they had the canopy on during assessment, results would have been different, first the wiper does not sweep very much of the screen, as it is located in top right hand corner, so only sweeps part of screen, not even half of it, unacceptable vision, there is drink bottle holder fitted standard, yet when the canopy is on, the washer bottle is fitted and blocks the drink bottle holder from being used.
toyota built good forklift, but the small touches and finishes, are not acceptable, should put more effort to finish things properly, show that you know something about forklifts when fitting these things to forklifts,
i have been driving since 1975, have taught numerous people to drive, can drive just about any type of forklift.

Dave:
Here is what Toyota has on their website about accidents since SAS:

The company's System of Active Stability™ (SAS) helps reduce the risk of accidents and injuries, minimizes the potential for product and equipment damage, and increases overall productivity levels.

SAS senses various factors that lead to lateral instability and potential lateral overturn. When those conditions are detected, SAS instantly engages the Swing Lock Cylinder to stabilize the rear axle, changing the lift truck's stability footprint from triangular in shape to rectangular. The resulting increase in stability substantially reduces the likelihood of a lateral overturn. The Active Control Rear Stabilizer or the Active Mast Function Controller also adds stability and helps avoid accidents or injuries.

SAS catapulted Toyota into the industry leader for safety when it was first introduced on the 7-Series internal combustion models in 1999. Since then, SAS has been integrated into the majority of Toyota's internal combustion models and is standard equipment on the new 8-Series.


There are more than 100,000 SAS-equipped lift trucks in the field with over 450 million hours of operation. With an increased population of SAS-equipped trucks in the field and in conjunction with mandatory operator training, overturn fatalities across all brands have decreased by 13.6 percent since 1999.4 In addition, there has been an overall 35.5 percent reduction industry wide in overturn, collision, loss of control and falls from a lift truck for the same period.5
Sources: 4. Source: United States Lift Truck Population: Industrial Truck Association, US Shipments Table, Electric Rider and Internal Combustion Engine included, Motorized Hand excluded; utilizing a 10 year lift truck life span.
5. Source: www.bls.gov Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 1999-2003

Yotaguy:
There was no argument presented about the SAS system. Please read my post more carefully. It is good to know that the electronic part of the system is set to Fail Safe by locking up the axle if there is a fault.

If there is an SAS error, the SAS system locks to 4 points. Therefore the argument that you would be back at a 3 point triangle is not accurate. It goes to it's safest point. The cylinder is energized to unlock.

See edited above post about where some of the info on SAS came from, that 0 fatalities comment was picked up from the comments of another poster. I have no idea if it is accurate and have no data from Toyota, so I will leave that to anyone that does.

On the argument that this system will allow the operators to push harder and then maybe be more likely to have an accident That may be true, but it would be no different than a motorcycle rider that rides much faster because he has a helmet on and knows he can take a faster crash than not having wearing one. It is not the helmets fault, the attitude of the rider or operator must come into play. A forklift or a helmet can give you an advantage, but if you immediately negate that advantage by doing something unwise it would not be as big a benefit.

Dave:
Where did you get the information that there have been zero fatalities on Toyota trucks with SAS? While your comment does not explicitly say it, by the context of what you have written I am assuming you mean no fatalities due to accidents that are directly affected by the SAS, not fatalities in general on these trucks. The lateral part of the system merely locks up the rear axle to keep the truck from toggling, thus somewhat increasing the lateral g's necessary to tip the truck by changing from a stability triangle to a stability rectange/trapezoid. However, the truck can still be driven fast enough while turning to tip it over. The way that Toyota has advertised it in the past would suggest to some that the SAS will in fact prevent lateral tipovers with the lift truck being driven empty on a flat surface. There is some concern that lift truck drivers may actually depend on the extra stability and push the envelope, but I don't know that to be happening in the field. Of course, all of the other ways to tip over a truck laterally still exist (drop-offs, docks, unstable or severely offset loads, overloading, etc.).
Your comment about the maintenance of the system is very important, because IF there is a failure mode of the system where the truck converts back to the stability triangle ( I do not know that to be true one way or another), and it is undetected, a driver who is used to driving a certain speed in turns may in fact tip over the truck because he/she is relying on the system. Therefore, I would assume Toyota took this into account when designing the system, and hopefully made the reliability of the system so high, and the detectability of its failure so high, that this scenario is virtually eliminated.