The Importance of Pallet Racking Maintenance

There's a good reason why pallet racking maintenance is so important: Ignoring it creates a dangerous, perhaps even life-threatening, situation. One good answer to your maintenance needs with your pallet racking system: Safety

Safety Netting is an economical and efficient way to safeguard your employees and merchandise. Narrow Deep Pallet Racking safety nets are not only required, but dutiful business practice. As with many things, there are several vendors of safety netting, both new and used. Netting can come in a variety of sizes, knowing what you need will avoid any order mistakes and bring your racks into compliance quickly. Installation will vary, and netting does not typically require maintenance further than periodic inspections.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will insist on pallet racking maintenance and safety standards. They require that tiered stored materials have prevention measures for falling, slipping and collapse in place. Aside from being a requirement a sound, arranged, proficient, warehouse is essential to a booming operation. Not only will netting protect your employees from injury, it will protect your merchandise from damage.

Choosing pallet racking manufacturers and vendors will vary on your budget, needs, and dimensions of your racks. There are many commercial vendors you can find online, or by recommendation of warehouses, even the old tried and true phone book still contains listings for safety net sales. Cost will vary but typical implementations will land in the hundreds in terms of cost.

To ensure your needs are met, you will need to know the height and width of your racks. Mounting kits are typical with pre-fabricated safety netting. In some cases, you may need additional mounting kits to protect different offsets in loaded racks.

Height can be obtained by measuring from the first beam level to the highest. At the highest beam level you will also have an extension to adjust to the pallet rack netting as the bay is loaded. Width is measured from the center of each post in a rack. Once you measure one rack, you can multiply by the number of rack bays in that section. You will also need to refer to your plastic pallet manufacturer, or specifications to determine what amount of weight you will be protecting, typically conveyed in "ft. lbs" (foot pounds).

Installation of safety netting can affect the entire system, including your pallet racking storage system. When buying pre-fabricated or custom systems, mounting kits and installation instructions are usually provided as part of the total system cost. While there are companies that install the systems, your warehouse manager and a small crew are likely able to implement the netting with relative ease. Periodic inspections of the nets and their mounting systems should be part of your warehouse operations in the future.

Another important element in pallet racking maintenance is the proper training of employees to treat all pallet racks in ways that will prevent damage. This means you should offer and insist upon continuing education regarding correct forklift use and unloading / loading techniques. This will cause your workers to be more conscious of the fact that maintenance is important to the security. They stay safe and OSHA stays happy.