The Segway PT was designed to fulfil many roles better than existing solutions. One area was in 'Enterprise and Logistics' for moving people and cargo about more efficiently. Cover more ground. Be more productive. Move more intelligently. Here's what Segway New Zealand's Philip Bendall recalled in 2013: “When I imported the first Segway ‘Human Transporters’ (today known as Personal Transporters) into New Zealand in 2003 they arrived in brown cardboard cartons emblazoned with the company’s original catchphrase – three sentences that very much embodied inventor Dean Kamen’s ultimate vision for his creation” – Philip Bendall. The first generation of Segway PTs offered the e167 model for this role. You can read more about the first generation models here. Second generation and SE models also offer a range of flexible solutions and the ability to customise to suit specific needs. In 2010 Philip Bendall designed a prototype "Segway Trolley" to move pallets of relatively large volume but low weight product from a warehouse and load them into trucks for distribution. Specifically, the product was loaves of bread manufactured by Goodman-Fielder. The challenge was to find a way to speed up the job compared with people pushing hand trolleys (150 year old technology). Forklifts (50 year old technology) were either too big or too slow to beat humans. Nor forklifts drive inside the trucks and also load them to full height, so a volume of space remained unused below the food of the truck. There had to be a better way. The brief identified the key benefits of the self-balancing, zero-turn radius Segway PT:

"The desired outcomes are to maintain the flexible movement capabilities that are unique to the Segway PT (safe and intuitive operation, rapid acceleration, and ability to turn on-the-spot), while maintaining the ease-of-use of a simple hand trolley..."

The construction and operation of the 'Segway Trolley' prototype is described more fully in this Project Information Sheet from July 2010: The prototype was used by a start-up called "Mo-bot" that developed small, quick, zero-turn forklifts (initially built around a Segway PT PowerBase). Around New Zealand many businesses have customised their 'materials handling' Segway PTs to carry everything from bolts of fabric between retail shops to university and hospital mail, from 'picking' medical supplies and automotive parts in factories, from on-set movie cameras to back-pack weed sprayers.