How Carolina Handling Saves 4,000 Work Order Hours Every Month
Carolina Handling is Toyota's exclusive forklift dealer in the Southeast. Their 500 field technicians service over 150 forklift models — each with more than 250 unique error codes. That's 27,000 potential ways a machine can fail.
Their technicians are some of the best in the business. But even the most experienced tech can't memorize all of that. When they hit something unfamiliar — a competitor's model, a rare error code — they'd go back to the truck, pull out a toughbook, and dig through hundreds of pages of manuals. They always figured it out. It just took time. And the customer was waiting.
The manuals themselves were part of the problem. They were digitized in SharePoint, but searching through thousands of documents was slow and cumbersome — and the manuals didn't always have complete information. Joe Perkins, Chief Operating Officer of Carolina Handling, wasn't looking for AI to replace his team's expertise. He wanted to put the right knowledge closer to the work.
So his team rolled out Squint.
From Pilot to 500 Technicians in Four Weeks
Carolina Handling ramped 500 technicians onto Squint in just four weeks. Getting started required minimal lift: uploading existing manuals took only two days, and because Squint connected to their existing SSO, technicians could simply log in and go. IT readiness made a real difference here — the team preconfigured devices and completed domain provisioning before rollout began, which kept the focus on adoption rather than troubleshooting.
Adoption was organic from day one. Technicians immediately started asking questions within the platform, and the combination of ease of use and faster access to information drove sustained engagement without heavy top-down mandates. That said, local ownership mattered. Managers at the dealer level played a critical role in accelerating usage — rollout worked best when it had champions on the ground, not just directives from the top.
What They Built
Carolina Handling ingested over 1,000 documents into Squint, which allowed them to generate procedures for preventative maintenance across their fleet. With Squint's Copilot, technicians could ask natural language questions and receive precise, model-specific answers instantly — no more digging through pages. Dealers who uploaded their own policies, procedures, and guides saw even higher adoption, and made Copilot more valuable in the process. The more knowledge they fed in, the more their teams got out.
One of the most important outcomes was unexpected. Squint's analytics and flagged queries began surfacing knowledge gaps across the team, creating a powerful feedback loop for Carolina Handling's technical publications group. Whatever Squint couldn't answer, well that pointed directly to information that needed to be added to the OEM manuals. The platform didn't just deliver knowledge, it also helped Carolina Handling identify where knowledge was missing.
The Results
The impact has been real. Technicians are resolving issues 3x faster. Carolina Handling projects approximately 4,000 work order hours saved every month. Support calls have dropped, and technicians are getting it right on the first visit more often.
The toughbook stays in the truck now. The expertise is already in their hands.
Less Time Searching, More Time Fixing
Carolina Handling’s story is what happens when a leader bets on his people instead of around them. Joe wasn’t looking for AI to replace his technicians’ expertise. He wanted to put better knowledge closer to the work. That’s exactly what Squint is built to do.
The toughbook stays in the truck. The answer is already in their hands.