Ignoring the need for pallet rack accessories does not make the need for them to go away.
Warehouse accidents can be the most serious due to the weight and size of many items stored and transferred.
If you have a few accidents in a row, it can reduce your profits. These have clear and direct costs such as medical and rehabilitation cost, workers’ compensation, and insurance premiums increases or possibly the loss of insurance altogether.
However, accidents have less obvious, indirect costs that are usually uninsured and these funds come right out of the company profits.
A safe warehouse operation is critical to any business who relies on warehousing to operate. An incredible way to make your warehouse safe and keep it safe is implementing rack accessories.
Read on to find out how a pallet rack accessory can improve your warehouse operation.
What Is a Pallet Rack
A pallet rack is a material storage system that has been designed to store materials that have either been palletized, bundled, in a barrel or tote. There are many options, depending on what pallet rack accessory you choose.
These systems also increase your storage space because now you are going up and improving the storage density of the same floor space.
They are well known for the efficient use of space as most large warehouses like Amazon have massive pallet rack systems.
The most common style used for a pallet rack system is the standard selective pallet rack.
You can get to any pallet stored on this rack without having to move another pallet out of the way to get to it, giving you lots of flexibility in your storage strategy.
What Are Pallet Rack Accessories
There are several accessories for your pallet racks designed to make your warehouse safer. Below are some 9 of the best accessories and a brief description.
Wire deck – Wire decking can support up to 2,500 lbs. of an evenly distributed load. These allow water to flow through your storage area smoothly should the sprinkler system be needed in the vent of a fire.
They also provide excellent visibility and provide an additional safety feature by placing them on one side of the rack system to prevent pallets from accidentally being pushed off the rack.
Skid support – Manufactured from an upside down channel that makes a rail that provides support to the legs or feet of a container providing easy access for the forks of a fork truck.
Fork clearance bar – Used to create separation between load beams and load. Because not everything is stored on a pallet or has feet, this will allow for safe retrieval of those kinds of bundles.
Pallet support – These provide support to the underside of pallets in addition to the wire decking.
Drum holder – Pallet rack drum holder allows you to store drums horizontally in your pallet rack.
Back to back & wall tie – These connect to hold racks rigid at a set space either from walls and other rows of pallet racks.
Column protector – A column protector or post protector will protect pallet rack uprights from damage to your storage systems.
Safety Panels & Straps – Engineered to stop damage and injury before it occurs with a barrier between items that are in the racks and the ground.
Frame Floor Guard – Used in rack systems primarily to protect the outside end-of-aisle frames on a rack system.
Before Purchasing a Pallet Rack & Accessories
Pallet racking is an efficient way to expand your storage without expanding your building.
Some things to consider before you buy. What product or family of products will you be storing and more importantly what is the size and weight?
Rack design includes a safety factor, so overstating the weight of what they will hold will add cost.
Will your product be on a skid or a 40 x 48 GMA pallet?
Does your product hang over the side of the pallet or skid? If it does this will need to be factored into the rack design.
Designing Your Pallet Rack
Most likely you will not be developing the pallet rack, but you will work with a pallet rack engineer from the company you have partnered with to purchase your pallet racks.
Here is where the specifics of your facility and warehousing needs get laid out and when you get to voice your concerns, wants and needs.
Fire Safety
First, you will need to learn what are the fire – life – safety codes in your area. Every local government has there own set of rules regarding fire, life and safety that will influence the design of your rack system, including the pallet racking installation.
The critical consideration for the fire, life, and safety is the egress distance. Egress distance is how far you have to walk to reach an exit if there were a fire.
If the distance is too far, the design will need to be updated to accommodate the egress distance.
Floor Strength
The strength of the concrete slab in your building needs to be able to support the weight of the rack system you install as well as the weight of what you will store on it.
If your floor is not as strong as it could be then wider foot plats can be used to help distribute the weight over a larger area.
In Rack Sprinklers
Depending on what you are storing and what your insurance company requires you may need to install sprinklers along with the pallet racking installation.
If it comes to that this could also alter your design by requiring the racks to be further apart and additional bracing to support the sprinkler piping.
Where to Start: Pallet Racks and Accessories
This article was a brief overview of pallets racking installation and pallet rack accessories.
There is so much to consider from local government laws to weight restriction to egress distances, and it isn’t a job for a novice, that is for sure.
To get started bring in a few different industrial racking specialists on site to evaluate your storage space and to recommend a solution.
Bringing in more than one and more than two specialists will help you identify the company who shines at installing these systems.
They will know what pallet rack accessory you need and what ones may not give you a return on your investment.
To learn more about warehousing and other business solutions contact us today.
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