The Start of the relationship
Just over 20 years ago, we started searching for a quality line of drawer slides to add to our product line-up. We wanted to make sure that this new line was known for quality and reliability above all, and after a few months of research and discussions with customers, we decided to reach out to Accuride.
Accuride is a US-based manufacturer with facilities around the world. They have an excellent market presence and a reputation for quality. Also, their presence in North America was important to us from a logistical perspective. Accuride’s head office is located in Santa Fe Springs, California, where they were founded. While they have manufacturing facilities around the world, their North American head office gives them easy access to markets in the US, Canada and Mexico. Logistically, this is great for us as leads times are much shorter, allowing us to be far more responsive to our customers’ needs.
Accuride Detail
Accuride has been producing “premiere motion solutions” for just over 50 years. The vague-sounding words are intentional, because “drawer slides” are very specific, and over the last 5 decades, Accuride has developed solutions based on slide technology that can be applied in any number of places: drawers (obviously), sliding doors, kiosks, ATM machines, ovens, refrigerators, service bodies, fire trucks, and so much more.
Accuride is different from other slide manufacturers because they are constantly innovating, and working with clients to develop new technologies. Most other slide manufacturers (with the exception of a few) only produce inexpensive (and often low-quality) versions of slides.
One of our key products as an “Industrial and Electronic” Distributor is the 9300 Series Industrial Slide. With up to 600lbs of capacity per pair, these slides are capable of handling almost anything, whether it’s a mobile (installed in a truck) or a fixed (in a cabinet or toolbox) application. They’re priced competitively and built to last thousands and thousands of cycles.
Accuride also guarantees the performance of their products for life. I’m not even sure we’ve had any quality issues with any of the slides we’ve sold in over 20 years.
Successes with Accuride
We’ve found several new customers as a result of Accuride, most notably, a Winnipeg-based company that makes medical carts! We are working with them to design in latches and other components, but they are a drawer-slide specific customer for the most part.
The biggest problem that Accuride has been able to solve for our clients is quality. There are so many knock-off slides in the market, it’s easy to get caught up in the idea of “cost savings”. While Accuride isn’t always the “lowest price” option, they have always proven to be the best in quality and reliability.
We recently had a customer switch to a custom Accuride slide with a self-closing mechanism from drawer slides made overseas. The knock-off slides were failing constantly and this caused all kinds of problems: warranty claims and repair costs were high, not to mention the frustration that the end-users were dealing with. Compared to those slides, Accuride was more expensive, but in the end, the “total cost” was lower because the quality was much better, and there were no more warranty claims.
Accuride Innovation
My family teases me when I talk about “cool drawer slides”. Someday, I’m sure they’ll find them cool too. That being said, there are some very cool things that Accuride makes:
- The AL4140 Series drawer slide, with a capacity of up to 3,000 lbs per pair! What’s most impressive about these slides is that each one is milled out of a single billet of aluminum.
- The CB-Lift Display mount is also a very cool slide application that allows you to conceal a TV or display inside a cabinet until needed!
How can you get your hands on some great Accuride products?
We’re happy to send you a hard copy of Accuride’s product offerings, or talk about your manufacturing requirements and specifications.
If you’d prefer to have some help with finding the right part, our experts are standing by! Fill out our handy contact form and we’ll gladly make your project our top priority. You can also call us at 1-800-318-1119!