The lift truck has become a crucial piece of equipment able to lift and move products and heavy supplies with both speed and efficiency. How a business utilizes this tool can significantly affect its profitability.
Free stacking pallets is the most popular storage system. Using this storage technique is both easy and economical for your lift truck. Free Stacking Pallets involves positioning one pallet on top of another to make a stack of goods. This is a stable storage technique and is recommended when dealing with numerous pallets of the same height and dimensions or large amounts of the same product. The drawback of this particular technique is that it just allows access to the objects placed last, so it does not allow a First In First Out system.
Pallet Racking is a system which involves the stable storage of various sized pallets. Any pallet could be accessed at any time, that allows a Last In First Out or First In First Out system. It allows the rack to grow and change shape depending upon daily requirements. This technique needs aisles that are wide enough to enable a forklift to maneuver easily and to freely access the racks. The downside is that this specific system means fewer pallets could be handled in the setting. This may not matter if there is sufficient space available.
Like Pallet Racking, the method called Narrow Aisle Racking allows a First In First Out or Last In First Out method. It differs in that a special narrow forklift is utilized. This means that smaller spaces are necessary between the aisles of pallets than in the Pallet Racking technique. The advantage is that more goods can be kept in the same area. The downside is that you would have to transition to a different kind of truck if you already own a standard lift truck. The expenditure of obtaining special machines may be a deterrent to implementing this method of storage.
Using your forklift to its fullest potential is important since it pays to consider your storage costs and retrieval costs of pallets. After that you can find out whether there are more efficient means to utilize your forklift in order to accelerate the process or to increase the usable area of your units. Greater efficiency equals greater profitability.