Material handling machinery according to the function can be divided into five categories, such as hoisting machinery, conveyer, loading and unloading machine, carrying vehicle and storage equipment.

Generally speaking, lifting machinery is used for lifting and moving, but the distance is short, its mechanism is intermittent movement; the conveyor can be continuous conveying material, conveying line is generally fixed, most of which are used to transport bulk material; loading and unloading machine can extract and loading and unloading.

Handling vehicles can flexibly arrange transportation route and economic transportation distance is longer, in indoor or outdoor work, with driving wheels; storage equipment is in the warehouse complete heap, and storage of materials of the device, including storage device, elevated warehouse and feeder.

With the development of industry, many machines have many functions and uses, such as forklift truck is carrying vehicles, can be used for loading and unloading, but also can lift heavy loads.