Tow Tractor

A tow tractor, sometimes called a tugger, is a low, driver-operated vehicle built to pull one or more wheeled carts or trailers rather than to lift and carry a load itself, which is the basic difference between it and a forklift. In factories and warehouses a tugger commonly draws a train of small carts along a fixed route between a stockroom and multiple assembly stations, a delivery pattern industrial engineers call a milk run, letting one driver replenish many work cells without each cell needing its own forklift traffic. The same basic vehicle, built far larger and heavier, is used on airport ramps to tow airliners away from the gate by their nose landing gear, since using an aircraft's own engines for ground movement exposes ground crews to jet blast and wears the engines unnecessarily. Electric power is now standard in both settings, since a tugger's job is steady pulling force at low speed rather than the high lift capacity a forklift needs.