With today''s high cost of space and labor, many warehousing enterprises are finding the pushback pallet rack to be one of the most efficient storage solutions.
Pushback pallet racking is a storage system that allows pallets to be stored one behind the other on a series of nested carts. Pallets are loaded and unloaded from the same side of the system, eliminating a need for separate aisles for each function. When one pallet is pulled, the one behind it rolls forward. The system is composed of a stable rack to which is added a series of inclined rails and carts.
By eliminating the need for multiple aisles in a warehouse, pushback pallet racks allow much higher density, yet with increased product access: they actually allow up to 90% more product storage than traditional selective rack systems, and up to 400% more selectivity than drive-in racks.
Frozen food storage is a common use for the pushback system. Because freezer space is so expensive to build and maintain, storage density is a must. For example, a 20,000-pallet pushback racking system was recently installed inside the freezer of a major ice-cream manufacturer, and another was installed inside a cooler of the dairy division of a large Midwestern food conglomerate. Both companies were seeking to maximize every possible square inch of storage space, and these systems were the answer.
But any enterprise, especially distribution or manufacturing in which there is a lower number of SKUs in high rotation, can benefit greatly from pushback pallet racking.
The frozen-food systems mentioned above are among many such installations manufactured and delivered by Steel King Industries, of Stevens Point, WI. Steel King has found that it can better service its clients by being a single-source solution, and is one of the few pushback pallet system manufacturers to do so.
"We manufacture both the racks and the pushback rail system, and perform the installation," says Dick DeFoe, Steel King''s national accounts manager for Flow and Pushback. "We''re a turnkey supplier so that you have one-source responsibility. Otherwise you have a dealer who has to deal with one source for the racks, another source for the pushback system, and maybe even a third for the installation. They then have to be responsible for how it all comes together, and if something doesn''t work right, one source can blame another, and it can get complicated. We absorb all of that, seeing it all the way through from design to an installed system." Steel King offers a patented pushback rail system design.
Since every system is made to order, all spatial and weight circumstances are taken into consideration. In addition to standard pallet sizes, pushback pallet racking can be designed to accommodate non-standard pallets such as plastic pallets, skids, and special metal containers, and can be built with a weight capacity of up to 3,000 lb per pallet.