Storage and handling
Racking, trolleys, stillages, pallets and ramps. This is the last kind of work a fabrication shop does and the most underestimated: the customer treats racking as furniture, the inspector as a load-bearing structure with a notice plate.
How a racking bay is built
Pallet racking is two braced frames with beams between them. Everything else follows from that: the perforation in the upright sets the pitch of the levels, the connector on the beam keeps it from lifting out when a pallet is raised from below, and the base plate with its anchor stops the frame moving under impact.
The anchors deserve a word, because they are often taken for over-caution. Racking does not fall over from its load — the more that sits on it, the more stable it stands. What tips it is a forklift catching an upright, and it is that impact the anchors are there for.
Six ways of storing
The kind of racking is set by the truck, not the goods. A counterbalance forklift with a standard mast takes a pallet up to six metres and needs a three-metre aisle; a reach truck goes higher and passes in two. That determines what can go in at all, and only then what will sit on it.
Cantilever racking is the only one with no shelf: tube and section rest on arms, and the length of the load is limited by nothing but the length of the run. A sheet cassette solves a different problem: sheet is stored on edge, because from a stack the bottom one cannot be reached without lifting off everything above it.
Trolleys and stillages
A stillage has a harder life than racking: it gets dropped, stacked, wheeled across uneven floors and lifted by a crane from lugs it was never given. So what matters in it is not wall thickness but how the corners and the base are made.
Castors are chosen for the floor rather than the load. On flat concrete polyurethane at 125–160 mm works; on block paving with joints and outdoors you want 200 and up in rubber, or the trolley jams at every joint and ends up being dragged.
Where to go next
Frames under equipment and machine guards are in frames and jigs. Platforms, mezzanines and the stairs to them are in platforms and walkways. Price, lead time and coating are in how ordering works.
Frequently asked questions
Is a load notice plate on racking mandatory?
Yes, and it is the only product in the section anyone asks for one on. The plate carries the load per level and per bay, the height of the first beam level and the date of installation. Without it the racking is not formally signed off, and after a collapse the question "how much was on it" has no answer.
Does racking have to be anchored to the floor?
It does. Racking does not fall over from the load — it falls over from a forklift catching an upright. The anchors hold the frame against that impact rather than against the weight, which is why they go in even on two-level racking.
What is drive-in racking worse at than adjustable pallet racking?
The queue. Pallets drive in one behind another and only the last one placed can come out. Storage density works out twice as high, but a mixed range cannot be kept that way — only identical goods in batches. Adjustable racking costs more per square metre and is far better for access.
Why a steel pallet when wooden ones exist?
Where timber is not allowed in: food production, clean areas, warehouses that get washed down. And where a pallet circulates for years — a wooden one falls apart in a season, a steel one outlives ten. In an ordinary warehouse it is unnecessary and costs five times as much.
Updated: