How and Why to Incorporate Pallet Racking into Your Small Sized Warehouse

Every warehouse faces challenges making the best use of the available space, and this is especially true when working in a smaller sized warehouse. The space may feel adequate for most of the year, but at times, perhaps when sales and orders are at a higher level than ordinary, the usable space isn’t well optimized. In those types of situations, it’s easy for a warehouse to become overcrowded and messy because there’s no room for everything to have its own designated area. There are several ways to address the problem, but designing and utilizing an efficient pallet racking system is perhaps one of the easiest ways to increase the usable area of a warehouse without incurring the additional costs of having to rent or buy more square footage.

Maximizing Available Space

Pallet racking allows for materials to be stored all the way up to the ceiling with access by a forklift. Simply adding one higher stack effectively doubles the storage area a warehouse can maintain, and three or four tiers of stackable pallet shelving can likewise triple or quadruple the efficiency of a warehouse. When only storing one level of pallets, all the extra room between the top of the pallet’s contents and the ceiling is being wasted when more product could potentially be stored there.

Maintaining Order with an Organized Storage System

Maintaining order in a smaller warehouse not only allows the area to function more efficiently by allowing workers to find needed product quickly but is also a safety measure. When pathways are blocked it makes it difficult for a forklift driver to see people on foot. Clutter also makes preparing shipments harder when staff has to search for boxes stored behind other boxes. Make employee workflow easier by maintaining both ordered pathways and an organized storage system. Smaller warehouses simply cannot afford to waste space. Pallet racks allow for floor to ceiling storage, improving efficiency and organization, and delaying buy or rent more space.