If you or your company uses a warehouse to store products, materials or equipment, you could be wasting a lot of space by storing items on shelves or on the floor. Pallet racks and cantilever racks allow you to take advantage of the empty air available in buildings and truly maximize your storage space.
Most shelving has capacities limited to 800 pounds per shelf, and the standard width for shelves is generally limited to 48 inches. This means you can only store a limited amount of product on your shelves before you turn to storing it on piles on the floor. This method is not only inefficient, it can be dangerous too. No one wants to trip over a pile of dry wall when they're distracted or in a hurry!
Pallet racks are used for storage in many factories and warehouses due to their ability to hold extremely heavy items as well as wider items than shelving can hold. Most pallet racks can go up to 20 feet high and 10 feet wide, so you can store nearly anything. Pallet rack shelving has capacities of up to 24,000 pounds per upright and 6,000 pounds per pair of beams, while structural pallet racks have upright capacity up to 45,000 pounds and beam capacity to 15,000 pounds - that's a lot of storage! When you need high weight capacity and a large opening, pallet racks are clearly the way to go.
Way too often companies put bulk items like dry wall, aluminum sheets, sheet steel, plywood, granite and flake board in piles on the floor, leaving it to the warehouse personnel to constantly sort unrelated heavy and bulky items. Because cantilever racks are designed to store longer or odd shaped materials, they are perfect for organizing warehouses, lumber yards or manufacturing facilities. Some of the many items that can be stored on cantilever racks include: aluminum sheets, piping, plumbing tubing, lumber, plywood, wooden crates, metal crates, sheet metal, dry wall, fabricated long parts, carpeting, flake boards, masonite sheets, marble, granite, and other stone products.
There are simple rules governing how to position the arms on cantilever racks. Rule #1: use the correct amount of arms so that the divided weight does not exceed arm capacity. So for example, a 4,000 pound load of materials would require at least 4 arms with 1000 pound capacity per arm. Or a 2,000 pound load would require at least 4 arms with a 500 pound capacity per arm. Rule #2: the total amount of overhang is equal to (1/#arms) x the length of the material. For example, if you had some 20 foot long plywood on a cantilever rack with 4 arms, the total overhang would equal (1 / 4) x 20 feet = 5 feet. So 2.5 feet can overhang on the left and the right.
Cantilever racks can also go up to 20 feet high, so you can utilize every last inch of space in your building. If you need more storage space in your warehouse, don't build more - install some pallet racks and/or cantilever racks for more efficient storage today!
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A Plus Warehouse is an online business-to-business distributor of quality industrial equipment including many lockers , conveyors, plastic bins, work benches, stainless steel cart selections, industrial cabinets, storage cabinets, matting, warehouse racks, steel shelving, and dock equipment.