Charlatte Brand Guidelines: The Yonne Electric Baggage Tractor Maker, Owned by Fayat Since 1999

A metalworking firm that turned to battery tractors.

Charlatte’s story starts with metalwork rather than vehicles. According to a corporate timeline published by the ground-support trade site AviationPros in October 2012, and repeated on the website of the company’s American arm, Charlatte SA was set up in 1961 in Migennes, in the Yonne department of Burgundy, to machine complete metal parts and to make anti-hammer bladder tanks.

The vehicle business came as a diversification. The same timeline says Charlatte SA created Charlatte Manutention in 1980 to add battery-powered tractors and flatbeds to its products. A company profile on the Ground Handling International conference website gives 1982 instead and describes the business as a spin-off from Charlatte, so both dates are given here. “Manutention” is the French word for materials handling, and the name has stayed with the vehicle business ever since.

Growth followed in steps. The timeline lists more battery tractor models in 1990 and, in 1991, the purchase of Mathieu-Sofraola in eastern France, which brought industrial sweepers into the range. In 1993 the company crossed the Atlantic and created Charlatte of America. In 1998 the French operation moved to a new factory at Brienon-sur-Armançon, also in the Yonne, and in 2000 the American business moved to a larger plant in Bluefield, Virginia, which its website describes as having its own test track.

Between those moves came the change of owner. In 1999, the timeline says, the Fayat Group acquired Charlatte. Fayat is the family-controlled French construction and equipment group that began as a public-works company set up at Libourne in 1957, according to French Wikipedia; it now spans building, foundations, energy services, pressure vessels and road equipment.

The electric baggage tractor.

Charlatte is known above all for electric baggage tractors on airport ramps. Fayat’s own description of the company today, on its road-equipment division page, calls Charlatte Manutention a French designer and maker of electric vehicles for the airport, industrial and military sectors, with a range of tractors, carriers and baggage conveyors, and says it has worked in electric handling for more than 40 years. The regional transport cluster CARA, which lists the company among its members, adds that it retrofits airport vehicles with electric drives and offers combustion-engined vehicles for military customers.

Its signature model is the T135 baggage tractor. In an October 2018 announcement, the autonomous-vehicle company NAVYA described it as the best-selling vehicle in its category, with more than 12,000 in operation worldwide; that figure comes from an announcement made jointly with Charlatte rather than from an independent count. Charlatte America’s website lists the T137-V3 electric baggage tractor, the compact TE.208 tow tractor and the PE80 electric flatbed tractor, along with belt loaders, cargo tractors, aircraft pushbacks and lavatory trucks.

The American arm also developed models for its own market. In October 2012 AviationPros reported that Charlatte of America, then known for battery-powered baggage tractors, belt loaders, utility vehicles, lavatory and water trucks, tow tractors and pushbacks, was adding the CT5, a baggage tractor with a choice of gasoline engines or a Deutz diesel. The magazine noted that it shared its body style with the CT5E electric cargo tractor introduced in 2011, and that the French plant had long sold a diesel tractor, the TD 225, overseas. It was not the American arm’s first attempt at a combustion model: its sales chief told the magazine that an earlier one, about a decade before, had been shelved while electric orders were strong.

The company also points to customer recognition. Charlatte America’s blog said in July 2009 that Southwest Airlines had named Charlatte its Equipment Supplier of the Year, only the second year the airline had given that award to an equipment supplier; that is the company’s own account.

Ground support equipment.

Ground support equipment is the machinery that works around a parked aircraft: tugs and pushback tractors, belt loaders at the hold doors, cargo loaders for containers and pallets, de-icers, catering trucks raised to the galley doors and passenger stairs. Its buyers are airlines, airports, cargo carriers, ground handlers and air forces, the customers that makers such as TLD and Oshkosh AeroTech name on their own websites.

The makers in this field present their machines where they work, on the apron: a tug pushing back an airliner at dusk, a belt loader pressed against a cargo door, a de-icing boom reaching over a wing in falling snow, a catering truck lifted level with a galley. Product pages show the equipment at work beside the aircraft it serves.

Trade shows are the other stage. inter airport Europe, held in Munich, is where Oshkosh AeroTech showed its boarding bridges and gate equipment in October 2025, and the International GSE Expo in Las Vegas is where it unveiled a compact deicer the month before. Makers also announce milestone deliveries — a numbered loader or tractor handed to a named operator — as press releases with photographs on the ramp.

Much of the current messaging is about electric and autonomous equipment: TLD runs a programme it calls “Leaner & Greener,” and Oshkosh AeroTech promotes battery-powered charging carts. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Fayat company at Brienon.

The newest chapter is automation. On 1 October 2018 NAVYA and Charlatte Manutention announced a joint subsidiary, majority-owned by NAVYA, to develop autonomous tractors for moving baggage and freight between the terminal and the aircraft. Its first prototype, the AUTONOM TRACT AT135, based on the T135, was presented at the International Airport GSE Expo in Las Vegas that month. The venture traded as Charlatte Autonom, and in November 2019, NAVYA reported, Air France, Charlatte Autonom and Toulouse-Blagnac airport put an autonomous baggage tractor into service between the baggage sorting area and the aircraft as a test in real conditions.

Today Charlatte Manutention is based at Brienon-sur-Armançon and appears under “special equipment” in Fayat’s road-equipment division, a division whose other brands include BOMAG, Dynapac and the sweeper maker SCARAB. Charlatte America’s website describes factory operations in Brienon, in Bluefield and in Crawley, West Sussex. The 2018 NAVYA announcement put the company’s staff at 140 people in France and the United States, while the Ground Handling International profile says the company offers technical assistance from France, the United States and the United Kingdom, along with training and spare parts.

For a design guide, Charlatte shows how a regional metalworking firm can become shorthand for a single product type, the electric baggage tractor. Compare TUG (Textron GSE), the American tractor and pushback maker gathered under Textron, and Mulag, another maker of airport vehicles. For this guide we use a deep navy, a light grey and a battery green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Charlatte’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.