Socage Brand Guidelines: The 1974 Modena Fabricator Behind ForSte Truck-Mounted Platforms

A general fabrication shop that turned to work at height.

Socage began as a metalworking shop. The company says SO.CA.GE, short for Società di Carpenteria Generale, or “general fabrication company”, was founded in 1974 to make metal components, and that in 1981 it turned to platforms for aerial work, making its name in the Italian market with an articulated-boom line. It is based in the province of Modena, in Emilia-Romagna.

In 1987, the company says, it joined the loader-crane maker Fassi in a SO.CA.GE-FASSI group, with the ambition of forming the first Italian group specialised in equipment for work at height. In September 2009 KHL described Socage as the aerial platform division of the Fassi Group, based near Modena, known above all for truck-mounted platforms up to 75 metres in working height and also making crawler-mounted “Spider” units up to 22 metres.

That year Fassi sold it. Vertikal.net reported on 10 September 2009 that a new holding company, First Step, had been set up to acquire the business, led by the entrepreneur Paolo Troni, who had bought the Brescia platform maker CELA earlier that summer, with Fiorenzo Flisi, one of the founders of Oil & Steel, joining as a key investor and being appointed president of Socage. Vertikal added that Fassi had been looking to sell the business for about a year. Socage’s own history dates the change to August 2009 and names the buyers as Fiorenzo Flisi and Maurizio Piantoni, two entrepreneurs with long experience of aerial platforms, whose aim it says was to speed up the company’s development through heavy investment in research and development.

Flisi has led the company since. In 2025 Vertikal described him as chief executive and said he had built Socage into a strong player in truck-mounted and, more recently, spider lifts.

ForSte on trucks, Raptor on tracks.

Socage’s core is the truck-mounted platform, sold under the ForSte name. The range on the company’s website runs from pick-up and van-mounted models, such as the ForSte 14A and ForSte 12VT, through machines for chassis under 3.5 tonnes, many now in “Speed” versions, to large telescopic units with jibs. The biggest listed is the ForSte 100TJJ, and Vertikal wrote in 2025 that Socage builds truck mounts up to 100 metres, with a strong pick-up and van range besides. The company says its 54TJJ fits trucks with a gross weight of at least 26 tonnes and uses a secondary jib to make movements that a basket with a single jib cannot.

The second line is the Raptor range of tracked spider platforms, with articulated models from the Raptor 18S to the Raptor 35S, telescopic ST models and electric SE and STE versions. The company says its spider range is available in hybrid and electric forms.

Small electric machines are not new for Socage. In July 2011 Vertikal reported that it would show the A314 NAT, for “Natural Aerial Transport”, at the APEX show: a 13.2-metre platform on an electric Ecomile FAAM truck, shown alongside the A314 UP on a Piaggio Porter as part of a range of compact City models.

The company says its forSte 20A Speed was named best truck-mounted platform at the Movicarga 2026 awards, and that it is an official sponsor of the Giro d’Italia 2026.

Design and documentation.

Aerial work platform makers present themselves through the machines first. Scissor lifts, articulated booms, telescopic booms, truck-mounted platforms and tracked spider lifts are usually painted in a single strong colour, such as an orange, a blue, a red or a yellow, with the maker’s name and the model code set large on the chassis or the boom. Seen across a site, the colour does much of the work a logo would do elsewhere.

Much of the industry sells to rental companies rather than to the people who use the machines, and its pictures often show that. Brochures and websites favour long rows of identical scissors and folded booms in a rental yard, machines lined up on a delivery truck, and close views of control boxes, battery packs and parts that a fleet workshop would care about. Product names tend to be strings of letters and numbers that encode working height, width or drive type.

The other stock image is the machine at work: a platform raised against a steel frame, a warehouse ceiling or a building facade, with operators in hard hats and harnesses at height. Electric and hybrid drive, lithium batteries and low-noise indoor use have become common themes in recent launches, described in the makers’ own words.

Trade fairs and awards fill the rest of the calendar. New models are often unveiled at The ARA Show in the United States, at bauma in Munich and at APEX, the access-equipment show in the Netherlands, while the industry press runs its own prizes, such as the International Awards for Powered Access. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where it says its machines are made — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

Buying suppliers, plants and a rival.

Socage has grown by buying its suppliers, factories and, most recently, a competitor. In September 2015 Vertikal reported that it had agreed to buy CATT, a Luzzara-based supplier that produced and painted steel fabrications for it, taking its workforce to around 140, and had begun working with the Austrian fabricator Welser on rolled high-tensile steel profiles for models such as the 28-metre ForSte 28D. The company says that on 22 December 2016 it bought the production plant of Manotti Srl at Boretto, in the province of Reggio Emilia, installing new machinery to fabricate platform components, and that in 2020 a new plant at Carpi became its main site. Its website lists sites at Carpi, Boretto, Casalmaggiore and Sorbara di Bomporto.

In August 2025 Vertikal reported that Socage had taken a majority stake in CTE, one of its main Italian competitors in truck-mounted and spider lifts, with CTE’s own sales and distribution network continuing to operate independently. The same month Socage set up a British distribution subsidiary, Socage UK. In March 2026 it launched Platform Service, an after-sales division replacing Socage Customer Service and supporting the Socage, Socage Raptor and CTE product lines; Vertikal said it would work from the group’s headquarters in Sorbara di Bomporto and an office in Monterotondo, while the company’s history names Carpi as its main site since 2020.

For a design guide, Socage shows how an engineering acronym can anchor a family of product names, from ForSte on trucks to Raptor on tracks, while the group adds brands of its own. Compare Platform Basket, another Emilian maker of tracked spider lifts, and Versalift, a maker of truck- and van-mounted platforms. For this guide we use a deep navy, steel grey and a safety yellow with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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