Warehouse and inventory management is a critical aspect for many businesses. Besides keeping your items secure and in top condition, commercial storage also saves a lot of time and improves order accuracy and business productivity.
A pallet storage unit is one of the most common materials handling systems that rely mainly on racks or pallets.
In today’s guide, we’ll take a closer look at what you can store in this type of storage and how to benefit from it. Let’s dive in!
How Do Pallet Storage Units Work?
Understanding how a pallet storage unit works allows you to make the most out of them. In these storage units, items are transported and offloaded over wooden pallets into the warehouse.
These pallets have a standardized double rack design, which is typically around 48 x 40 inches in North America. This standardized size gives them multiple advantages.
Most importantly, they raise items above the ground, provide a stable base for the stored items, and make it easier for forklifts to handle them for more efficient distribution and logistics.
What Are the Most Essential Items to Store in Your Pallet Storage Unit?
The space inside a pallet storage unit can be quite precious, which is why you should make sure that you’re storing the most essential items there.
While you can store just about anything you like in storage (as long as you have the space), most businesses use their pallet warehouses to store specific items. Here’s a quick look at some of them.
1. Heavy Items
One of the main reasons companies and businesses opt for pallet storage is dealing with relatively heavy items.
Although regular storage could be easy to manage if you typically work with small items and confined shipments, things could get pretty intense if their weights are too heavy to handle manually.
This is also a common problem in warehouses that store bulky items in containers. In that case, most businesses will opt for forklifts to make the distribution process much easier.
Pallets come in a wide range of sizes and designs. However, they all share one essential feature, the double-rack construction.
This one allows forklift arms to easily slide into that gap to lift the pallets, which makes it very easy to organize, store, transport, and distribute heavy objects.
As a general rule, if you typically store items that are 80 to 100 lbs or heavier, using pallet storage units would be a great choice.
For example, pallet storage units are perfect for businesses that typically store:
- Training equipment and machines
- Large electronics like refrigerators and grills
- Furniture items
2. Stackable Items and Containers
Another type of items that could greatly benefit from a pallet storage unit would be stackable ones.
Many companies and industries design their products so that they can be easily stacked on top of each other. This includes various forms of containers from barrels and buckets to full-sized containers.
The stackability allows you to store multiple items on top of each other, which helps you utilize the vertical space in a warehouse.
This also increases the space efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the storage unit by allowing you to store more items within the same space.
Additionally, it creates more legroom for the warehouse operators to move around, which makes it easier to work with items and improves the overall productivity and accuracy of the orders.
Despite being relatively small, pallets are designed to be very sturdy. In fact, a standard pallet could support anywhere between 4,000 to 4,600 lbs, despite only weighing 30 to 40 lbs themselves.
3. Boxed Items
Most warehouses store their items in standardized boxes, which makes it easier to stack them on top of each other and utilize the vertical space of the storage unit.
Of course, you can store boxed items without using pallets. Yet, laying these boxes on pallets makes the distribution process a lot faster and easier. These boxes may contain anything imaginable from food to utensils, toys, machines, tools, etc.
Without pallets, boxes are usually transferred and loaded from and to trucks one by one. On the other hand, pallets provide a sturdy platform that can support a lot of boxes and keep them stacked neatly in storage.
Additionally, boxes stored on pallets could be easily checked, even if they’re loaded vertically, without disrupting the order of the items.
4. Irregular Items
Most perishable and non-perishable products are stored in boxes for better stacking and organization inside a commercial warehouse.
However, this rule doesn’t necessarily apply to every product out there. For instance, bulky, pre-assembled products like lawnmowers or full-sized pianos can be very hard to transport in their regular form.
In that case, using wooden pallets to create a standardized platform makes them easy to manage and distribute.
5. Multi-Component Items
Pallet storage units are also great for items that are stored while disassembled. For example, some multi-component products are stored so that each major part is encased in a separate box.
In that case, a warehouse manager must keep track of all these separate boxes and check each shipment to make sure that it has all the necessary items included, and that’s where pallet storage units come in handy!
Keeping all related items on separate pallets improves the warehouse’s productivity and makes it much easier to track and check them before shipping to ensure their accuracy and fulfillment.
6. Fragile Items
Most storage units will use flat concrete as a material for the floor. Concrete is excellent for supporting heavy weights without cracking but its hardness makes it problematic with fragile items.
If you’re mainly storing vulnerable and fragile items, pallets could be a great investment. The wooden frame of pallets acts as a buffer that separates sensitive objects and hard concrete floors.
7. Environment-Controlled Items
Some items need to be stored in a controlled environment with stable temperature and humidity levels because they’re prone to moisture damage.
This includes a variety of merchandise and products like fabrics, clothes, upholstery, mattresses, books, antiques, etc.
These products are usually kept inside plastic wraps. While this might help with protection from water damage, it may not be enough in the case of floods and spillage accidents.
Additionally, keeping these products directly on the floor makes them prone to damage by pests and insects.
For that reason, raising these items above the ground using pallets adds an extra layer of security and helps in keeping products in top condition.
Important Tips to Use Pallets Properly for Storage
Now that you know how versatile and flexible pallet storage units could be, here are some final tips to help you manage a pallet storage unit properly and make the most out of it.
Plan Out the Storage Unit Before Stocking
Storage units can vary in terms of dimensions and general design. For that reason, you need to map out your storage unit so you can figure out how many pallets it can hold.
This can also help you figure out the most accessible parts of the storage unit, which you should reserve for items that move around the most.
Leave Enough Space Between Different Pallets
If you work with a variety of items on pallets, you should design them in the form of isles. This way, you have enough space to move around the storage and check/restock all items regularly without having to move things around.
Keep Weights in Check
Each type of pallet has its unique weight rating. To ensure the safety of the items in your storage, you have to make sure that pallets are not overloaded and that the heaviest objects are stacked first.
Provide Labels for Everything
Keeping everything labeled is critical for storage units, especially if you use pallets. Moving pallets around is relatively easy but it’s still a lot of work and often includes heavy and fragile items.
To avoid that, add labels on multiple sides so you can easily check them from any angle.
Wrap Up
There you have it! A brief guide that shows you all the different items you can store in a pallet storage unit.
As you can see, pallets come in a wide range of designs and sizes, which makes them perfect for a huge variety of products and items, whether they’re perishable or non-perishable.
In addition to facilitating storage and distribution, pallet storage units are also excellent for items that need extra protection, such as fragile and environmentally controlled products.
