Safety is critical to the continuing function of your daily operations. Accidents can happen anywhere to anyone – a trainee, a worker who takes a wrong turn, or even an experienced operator having an off-day. Efforts to protect your racking systems not only helps to reduce damaged merchandise but it also helps ensure the safety of your valued employees.
Forklift accidents can result in pallet rack damage, costly repairs, downtime, damaged inventory, and injury to workers. Rack protection is essential to maintaining your inventory and key assets because they keep the structure safe at various impact points.
No matter the size of your storage facility, pallet rack protection will increase your productivity and eliminate damages due to narrow aisle for trucks, lifts, and individuals encountering sensitive rack uprights. These factors are important particularly when you consider the damage a forklift can cause. ABCO provides the most suitable protector or guard for your pallet rack to ensure safety and no damages.
ABCO welcomes the opportunity to visit you and assess any at-risk products. There are several ways to protect your racking. The rack aisle protector, rack post protectors, wire mesh rack guards, and floor angle guide. These all offer protection to the most vulnerable parts of your warehouse and business. They can be formatted into the size and shape to fit your protection needs. ABCO helps to protect your inventory, investment, and your valued employees.
Contact us here for all of your rack protection needs.
It’s not just a product, it’s a service. It’s not just a commodity.
Certainly, if you are simply buying some uprights and beams, maybe even a few wire decks, then maybe racking is just a commodity.
However, in today’s world of expensive real estate, air tight leases and even more expensive labor, warehouse tenants are most times requiring so much more than just buying some materials.
The correctly optimized warehouse, over the lifespan of a lease, can save significant money both in real estate and labor.
But there is so much more to it than that. There is an incredible amount that goes into even the simplest pallet racking system. What might appear to be easy actually requires a lot of detail.
The existing floor, sprinkler system and even the amount of ingress doors the building has can affect what type of racking you can have, how tall it can be, and how you can install it. The proper column sizing, aisle spacing and footplates can also have a great effect on your racking system. The weight of your product, how flammable it is, and even how you package it, can severely limit your options.
The permit process, in and of itself, is a beast all to its own. It can take up to two weeks (or sometimes significantly longer) to gather all of the necessary information for the permit package. It is required that we submit a PE signed letter validating that your sprinkler system can adequately protect your product based on its commodity class and how it is stored. Or worse yet, it is very possible that your sprinkler system might even need to be upgraded in some older buildings. We also need a PE signed set of plans that show the racking, the egress/emergency lighting layout, and the racking calculations showing that the rack can support the weight of the product being stored.
For all of these reasons, and many more besides, it is important that you do not see pallet racking as not just a commodity. If you have a deadline to hit, or you need to optimize your space, or if you need to keep your overall costs down by most effectively utilizing your space, finding the right partner to deal with is integral to a successful long-term operation.
If you don’t already ready have a relationship with a racking company, start looking for one now. Even if you are not planning on any kind of work for years. If you think that you might need it in the future, developing the relationship now will save time and money later.
Then, once you know you are going to move or make any alterations, start engaging your racking company early in the process. If you pick the right one, they will actually assist in your search for a new building. The right racking company can help evaluate the building, desired layout, the sprinkler system, the electrical requirements and much more. And the right company will do all of this simply because they want to earn your racking business.
The individual pallet rack pieces themselves might be a commodity. But the value of the service that goes into it, most definitely is not. At the end of the day, the amount of money you will save by working with the right company, and creating the right solution for you, will be all the peace of mind that you need to perform at your best.
Choose ABCO Systems as your racking partner and we will do our best to help you design your space to its fullest potential. Our design and engineering team are ready to help optimize and layout your building with not only your business needs, but with safety and efficiency in mind as well.
Give ABCO a call at (201) 507-0999 or send us an email for more information.
Being that we are a construction company, we have always been serious about safety. It has always been our first priority for a plethora of different reasons.
However, it was not until about 5 years ago that we learned how much we did not know. ABCO started to work with our insurance company to create standards for our staff and plans in case of emergency. We are still evolving and we are still learning more every day.
Further to that, because we work with local code officials in townships all across the country, we have learned a lot of what they have to teach us. For them, it comes down to the simple fact that life safety is their only priority.
It is because of this that we are beginning to place even more of focus on helping our customers create safer environments for their teams. There are some seemingly basic life safety requirements that are often times overlooked and we are dedicated to increasing our own knowledge to ensure that we continue to provide more and more value to our customers.
Warehouse Safety
Is your fire protection system up to date? Do you have enough water flow in your building to support your commodity and how it is stored in your Pallet Rack or your Garment on Hanger (GOH).
Are your Egress Lights active and working? Do you have a clear Egress path?
Do you have the necessary safety barriers between lift equipment and walking staff members?
We can help you identify and rectify all of these potential hazards. Not only will it help increase employee moral by showing you care about employee safety, but it will also increase productivity by having standard operating procedures. On top of all that, a clearly documented safety protocol can also reduce your liability, and therefore your costs, with your insurance company.
ABCO Systems has developed a safety/maintenance program that can help with all of your needs.
There is an interesting trend in the used pallet rack market. When renting a warehouse, some landlords are throwing in a perceived bonus to get new tenants. Not only do they get the space, but it comes with rack already installed.
What a deal, right!
Well it can be a deal or it could be a nightmare. The only way to figure out the difference is with a lot of research and maybe some help from an expert. Both parties, the landlord and the tenant, need to know exactly what they are getting and whether the deal is actually a deal.
Here’s What You Need to Look for When Renting a Warehouse
Tenants
Current Capacity: You, when renting a warehouse, don’t know what the plan was by the original tenant that installed the rack. Were they storing car parts or giant stuffed animals? Even if you look at the old tenants product and believe it must have been heavier than yours, how do you know they did not have a WMS (warehouse management system) that only allowed certain items on the shelf levels and kept the heavier items on the ground?
Even the placement of the shelf levels effect the load capacity of the uprights. Without seismic and load calculations based on your product locations or having an experienced partner in the rack business evaluate the capacities of the system you may not realize the danger until it is too late.
Layout: How did the previous tenant layout the rack? Was it for single, double, or triple-deep storage? Does that work for your need? Does that truly optimize the space you are moving into for your product? If not, this means you will need to hire a company to relocate the rack so that it will work for your storage.
While this could be a good money saving tactic for the new renter, you need the help of an experienced partner in the rack business, to look over the layout and let you know how much it will be to reconfigure the rack.
Landlords
You have a building with rack in it, but that may be a turnoff for some renters. The rack may be for a very specialized layout or business and may not work for 95% of the market. In this case the best idea for the landlord is to sell the used rack, and rent the building empty.
If you wanted you could even reduce the price of the rental due to the windfall they are receiving for selling the used rack. Lower rent is always appealing to the market.
If you need help from either side, whether you’re a landlord with a current rack set-up or a client looking to rent or have rented a building with used rack in place, contact ABCO Systems to get a free review of your current storage. We buy used rack or can help you reconfigure the storage in a way that works for you.
Knowing how to install pallet racking can help you determine whether it is worthwhile to do it yourself or to hire out the installation. When you are putting together your warehouse design, being able to install your own equipment and infrastructure supplies means being able to control your bottom line. That’s why it is important to understand the labor costs and timelines for items like pallet rack installation.
Individual Instructions on How to Install Pallet Racking
The first thing to understand is that every manufacturer has slightly different instructions for how the pallet racks should come together. That means that you will need to refer to the individual instructions for your pallet racking to see how the pieces should fit. This also helps you to better determine whether or not your installation is going according to plan. Once you have understood the individual instructions that will let you put together the structures in your plan, it’s important to move on to the step they all have in common: concrete anchoring.
Anchoring Your New Racks to Concrete
Make sure that you are going into this process with a floor plan, first and foremost. From there:
Consider whether you should use strike anchors or wedge anchors. Consult the specifications for your particular ABCO Systems model for recommendations.
Using the holes in the bottom of the racking as a template, carefully drill the holes for your anchors.
Clear the holes of all debris with a shop vac or air hose.
Place the washes and thread the nuts for each anchor.
Place each anchor in the hole, through the legs of your pallet racks.
Hammer the anchors into each hole and tighten all nuts with a torque wrench until they attain the correct tightness.
That is how to install pallet racking. From there, it’s just a matter of putting together your rack according to the manufacturer’s directions.
