November 3, 2026

Every Power Study Has a Week It Doesn't Talk About

Q: Why do forklift power studies get sizing wrong?

Because they typically sample 24 weeks of activity and treat that window as representative. If the sample window includes an unusual period a volume spike, a slow stretch, equipment down for maintenance the resulting battery and charger sizing is built on an outlier, not a true baseline.

Q: How long should a power study run?

Long enough to capture normal variation, which a fixed 24 week study structurally can't guarantee. Continuous monitoring removes the question entirely by measuring actual usage on an ongoing basis instead of in one fixed window.

Q: How do you know if your fleet's sizing is based on an outlier study?

Common signs: batteries that never seem to run low despite "full" daily use, chargers that stay mostly idle, or sizing that was set years ago and never re-measured against current operations.

Q: Is continuous monitoring more expensive than a one-time power study?

The SCORE Program's initial audit is free and no-commitment it's designed to show whether continuous monitoring would catch meaningful drift before any ongoing cost is discussed.

One Bad Week Can Set Your Baseline for a Decade

A standard forklift fleet power study runs for 2–4 weeks. That's a small enough window that an unusual week — a volume spike, a slow stretch, a few trucks down for maintenance — can quietly become the baseline a whole fleet's battery and charger sizing gets built on. Most operators never notice when this happens. They just notice, a year or two later, that the batteries don't quite add up, or a charger never seems fully used — and chalk it up to how the business runs, rather than questioning the study that set the numbers in the first place.

How a Short Window Becomes a Permanent Assumption

A power study isn't wrong because the people running it are careless. It's wrong because of how snapshots work: 1. The sample window is short by necessity. Nobody budgets a year-long study before approving equipment — so 2–4 weeks becomes the practical standard. 2. Whatever happens in that window becomes "normal." A slow month, a seasonal dip, a maintenance backlog — the study has no way to flag that this period isn't representative. 3. The resulting sizing gets locked in. Batteries and chargers get purchased against that baseline, and nothing in the system revisits it as real operating patterns shift over the following months and years. The result: a fleet that was sized correctly for one unusual week, and incorrectly for every normal one since.

$500K+

in identified fleet savings across a 20-site national grocery chain — identified in 75 days of continuous monitoring

Source: SCT platform data — anonymized client engagement. Full case study available for download.

Review our latest Case study

What Continuous Data Catches That a Snapshot Can't

The fix isn't a longer snapshot — it's not stopping at one audit window at all. A dedicated Fleet Analyst who keeps watching after week four means one outlier stretch doesn't get to become the baseline for the next decade. Two real examples show the gap between a snapshot and continuous data: • A 20-site grocery network, audited continuously rather than in a single snapshot, found $556,100 in stranded capital in 75 days — capital a short study would have had no way to surface, because it wasn't visible in any single two-week window. • A separate audit at a large retail distribution site found battery sizing assumptions were off by 60–75% from actual use — a gap that had been drifting quietly for years, invisible to a one-time study, before anyone measured it continuously. It's not that the original studies were done badly. It's that assumptions don't update themselves. Only continuous data does.

When's the Last Time Your Fleet Data Was Actually Current?

Not just collected once, a long time ago — current. The SCORE Program replaces the one-time snapshot with a dedicated Fleet Analyst who keeps watching, so assumptions get caught drifting instead of quietly compounding.

Download the Full Case Study

See what 75 days of continuous monitoring found across a 20-site national grocery chain fleet — and how the findings translated into over $500K in identified savings.

Download the Case Study

Frequently Asked Questions

What fleet operators and dealers ask most about continuous monitoring engagements.

Why do forklift power studies get sizing wrong?

How long should a power study run?

How do you know if your fleet's sizing is based on an outlier study?

Is continuous monitoring more expensive than a one-time power study?

About Us

SCT provides cost-effective telematics and remote power management solutions that optimize motive power fleet and self-service machine efficiency and reduce downtime with essential insights.

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