What to Consider When Purchasing Pallet Racking

When you need to purchase racking for your warehouse, there are many different types of pallet rack available. Not one style of rack is universal for all applications. One really needs to consider different factors, that all will include everything from safety to how it affects the company bottom line. Different questions that need to be answered when considering what kind of racking to purchase are:

• What is the storage density that I need?
• How are loads and pallets going to be picked?
• How long will it take to pick a typical order in the rack?
• And of course, what is the cost to buy and install the rack?
• Do I currently have the correct style of forklift to pick and put away my products into the rack?

Answering these questions will help you lay out the area where you will be having your rack installed. It will assist you in how many rows you can put up, the distance between the rows, and do you need to change the style of equipment you have so you can utilize the rack.

For example, your company may have sit down rider forklifts in 15 foot wide aisles, but your executive management team would like to increase the storage by a percentage that requires the rack to be in ten foot wide areas. You may need to change from a sit down forklift to a stand up reach truck to allow for the more narrow aisles. Or the storage density may be deep enough that requires you to purchase longer forks to properly pick up the load.

Lastly, purchasing rack in an existing building if done correctly could give you more vertical storage for your company growth without having to buy a bigger building or expand the ground square footage of your current plant. Those options would cost a lot more than the pallet racking.

There are many critical questions that have to be answered when purchasing storage racking for your company, so you can enjoy the space saving benefits in your warehouse. For more information, contact us to discuss your storage & pallet racking questions.