With near double-digit inflation with prices of everything rising, businesses have to juggle costs to survive. If you need to increase warehouse capacity, moving to larger premises is one option but the costs will go up including rent, business rates and heating and lighting bills. However, another option is to stack goods even higher. You may even be able to double your warehouse capacity. Using a reach forklift truck you can stack pallets as high as 12.5m. There are other options line VNA (very narrow aisle) forklift trucks which can lift loads even higher up to 13.5m. However, these can only be used in the aisles as they need guidance systems like guide rail or wire. The VNA forklift truck cannot be turned, only the load can be turned. Hence these are ideal for specialist warehouses and are very expensive.
Using a counterbalance forklift truck, you can reach racking of up to 4m. Using a taller mast you can go even higher. But if you want to stack goods up to 12.5m, then for most warehouses, the only option is to use a reach forklift truck.
In this blog we look at some of the features you should be looking for stacking goods at a great height. These include:
- Good visibility. Ensure the reach forklift truck you are buying is designed for maximum visibility for stacking high loads. Overhead guards should give maximum visibility as well as protection against falling objects.
- Ensure the design of the mast is slender to give maximum visibility of the load.
- Use a reach forklift that helps put a pallet in the high racks safely using camera/monitor combination.
- A pre-set height selector will provide further assistance. The height selector could be pre-set to align with the rack height.
- Automatic centring of fork tilt and side shifting in advance will improve safety and productivity as it will reduce cycle times.
- Stopping loads at height might result in in mast swaying back and forth. The forklift operator has to wait for the mast to stop swaying before the load can be put away. However, the reach forklift truck can be equipped with passive sway control which dampens the mast movement. Alternatively, you can have active sway control which pro-actively controls sway movement through a software.
Using a reach forklift truck is a great way to increase warehouse capacity by stacking loads higher and save costs associated with moving to larger premises.
Wallace School of Transport is a fully accredited RTITB company with over 50 years' experience. You can be trained either at your own work site or at Wallace Centre in Park Royal. If you have any questions, call Wallace Forklift Training on 020 8453 3440, choose option 3 or click here to email us.