You see this often enough. A builders’ merchant or steel stockholder has outgrown their current system and stock has started to spill onto the floor. Now the goal is to determine if they need cantilever racking or whether standard pallet racking will suffice. The most honest counsel we can give is: it depends on the shape of the product they are storing. In fact, in many situations, we find pallet racking is more than sufficient, and cantilever is not necessary.
With that in mind, the following is a basic working guide to the differences.
When do you use pallet racking?
If long goods are packaged as neat bundles, are palletized, and do not produce significant overhang, standard pallet racking is appropriate and costs less. We see a lot of timber, boards, and bagged goods that are moved and remain on pallets. If the stock is palletized and can easily be moved with a forklift, there is no advantage in placing a load unit system in front of a pallet system.
The issues arise when the load is not unitized as a pallet.
When you really need cantilever
Once your stock is long, loose, or awkward enough pallets uprights start getting in the way, cantilever may be the solution. This is the case for 6-meter long timber, steel bar, rolled products, pipes, and various other sheet or stock materials. Uprights are the framed encasements for each pallet rack bay. Cantilever is designed to not have this framing. The front is open and a side-loader or forklift can drive loaded product straight in.
Another indication that you may need cantilever is if the rest of your staff stock by forcibly passing the long product through the framed bay if they can even access it and are swearing when they do.
Single or double sided, indoors or out
Once you’ve decided on cantilever you have a few more decisions to make. You can either get single sided or double sided racks. Single sided racks load from only one side. These are useful when you are tight for space or working along the edge of a building. Double sided racks load from both sides and are more space efficient. Which you decide on is fully dependent on the layout of your space and the aisles your handling equipment require, which is genuinely worth a survey as the width required for aisles will take up more space than expected when calculating how much space you will have.
If the stock is often kept outside (and much of the long stock does), then the stock is likely covered in weatherproof tin and/or the long stock is covered in weatherproof tin. Galvanised steel won’t rot in bad weather, and you can add a roof to the frame if you need it to stay dry. You don’t need a planning application to cover the frame with a full roof.
The interesting bit
Tidy, palletised stock with no overhang means pallet racking, and save your money. Long, loose, or awkward stock with overhang means cantilever, every time. If you are somewhere in the middle or are not sure, that’s the sort of thing we will tell you the truth about when we come and check your stock. Our cantilever racking page has a lot more info about the system if you would like to read it.