Back in 2015 I was asked to visit a pretty well known on line retailer to advise them on how they can do just this. Unfortunately, I had to leave the potential client without the answer to this question. I remember thinking to myself, I am a pallet racking specialist, not a miracle worker.

The reason for this is that the client didn’t want to spend any money, and wasn’t willing to change anything. There were plenty of pointers and suggestions, but client wasn’t ready to change.

Firstly, any reconfiguration of your storage system is going to cost money, and it is going to cause some level of disruption to your operation. In fact, it is the levels of disruption that increase the costs, and a lot of the time the installation teams will be much slower working, while you are operating, and there will be a lot of down time to boot. All of which you will be paying for. But, the overall costs of this will be significantly lower that taking on a new warehouse, or paying for third party storage. So, what will it be?

Reduce aisle widths and change your fork truck type

By changing from a reach truck to an articulated truck, you can potentially reduce aisle widths by up to 50%, leaving you more room to put up more runs of pallet racking. We have a certified method of moving entire pallet racking runs using rollers, literally relocating the entire run in minutes. Admittedly it takes a lot longer to unfix, and refix the racking, and we also apply resin to remove the holes left in the floor. This minimises disruption to your operation drastically, particularly if it can be done on a weekend.

Assess your Pallet heights

Take a look down your runs of racking, look at each level all the way down the run. How much empty space is there from the top of the pallets to the underside of the beam above? How many more pallet levels could you get in there if you condense everything?

Do you have any other areas where you could put racking, could it perhaps be a single sided run rather than double sided?

Try Out High Density Systems

Have you considered a higher density system such as Drive-In Racking or Pallet Live Racking? Maybe even Shuttle Racking? Could you remove some of your existing racking, and install a high density system such as this? They cost more money, but the efficiencies can be great.

If you would like more details on any of these suggestions, or would like to talk any of this through, please feel free to get in contact, and we would love to help.

So – remember:

  1. Narrow your aisle
  2. Look at your pallet heights
  3. Consider a high density system

Please look out for our other articles about pallet racking in your warehouse.