Protect Your Racking From Accidental Damage

When your business invests in good quality racking and shelving, it is a good idea to try and protect it from accidental damage. You can't legislate for every eventuality but you can, with a few carefully placed barriers and protectors, minimise the risks.

The most common form of damage is from fork lift trucks. These machines carry a lot of momentum and those strong and thin forks that make it easy to pick up pallets are also capable of inflicting a lot of damage. The best way to guard against this is to have a combination of protective products installed in all the key areas of your warehouse.

Corner pallet racking posts are particularly vulnerable, single post steel rack protectors offer an affordable way to protect them and are simply fixed to the floor. It is not always necessary to affix protectors to every post, it is best to identify the key points of entry and exit along with high frequency traffic aisles to map out the most strategic installation points. In those situations where fixing to the ground is not an option, our plastic protection guards can be used as they utilise Velcro fastening straps. Steel barriers (as shown in the photograph) are available in a number of different styles and these can be used to protect whole end frame sections.

Remember, the affected racking sections should be unloaded immediately and clearly marked as not suitable for use until fixed. Not having a storage area available for even a short space of time could seriously impact your warehouse operations. Ignoring the damage and continuing to use the racking will put added load onto other components and you run the risk of a major racking collapse.

When there are damaged pallet racking components, we would advise that you have a racking safety inspection conducted to assess the whole structure and to recommend the right course of action to get back to a safe working condition.

For help and advise regarding racking and shelving protection please call us on 01993 779494.