Using proper pallet-racking systems can help companies operate more efficiently by improving material flow and increasing usable vertical space. However, pallet-rack safety is a critical issue for any company using one of these complex systems. 

Accidental damage in an industrial facility is inevitable, unfortunately. Damaged pallet-rack systems are particularly dangerous. They can topple, damaging products, facilities, and equipment, or, worse, injuring people. Injuries from collapsing pallet-rack systems are often severe—and sometimes fatal. 

Every employee deserves a safe working environment. That's why Conveyer & Caster has compiled a list of helpful dos and don'ts for how to use your pallet-rack system properly. These tips will help ensure the safety of your most important asset—your employees.

3 Lessons for Every Caster Customer

An air conditioner manufacturer had long relied on Conveyer & Caster for the best cart casters to move their cooling units during production. Most of the units — typically used in data centers for the IT industry — were 2,000 to 5,000 pounds. That’s heavy, but still easy enough to push or tow around the plant.

Casters aren’t just wheels that help transport goods through your plant or warehouse. They’re critical tools that can increase (or decrease) the safety and productivity of your workers.

“OEMs of these shop floor stalwarts continue to innovate,” writes Chris Lewis in Modern Materials Handling. “Suppliers are designing new products that can make operations more efficient, reduce noise levels and improve ergonomics and safety with products that require less effort.”

Lewis goes on to highlight two innovations in caster technology that are helping, as he says, “reinvent the wheel.”

Moving bundles of 25-foot-long aluminum rails, tubes, rods, and other extrusions isn’t easy. For years, BRT Extrusions in Niles, Ohio, used forklifts to carry their bulky products from the packaging station to the weighing station and then to shipping or storage.

But it was risky. Maneuvering wide loads through narrow aisles—between workers and workstations—could potentially damage products or equipment, and injure people. 

In manufacturing and logistics, conveyors are essential elements for moving products into, through, and out of one location to the next. Conveyors link all processes of manufacturing, transferring components and work-in-progress from a starting point to finished packaging.

The equipment may also move products in a distribution center picking point to a loading dock. Moreover, a conveyor may be necessary to move finished products into a truck for delivery.

There are as many types and configurations of conveyor systems as there are uses. Conveyer and Caster’s Total Material Handling Solutions design, produce and install any conveyor configuration to expedite product movement, whether as individual units or cases to fully loaded pallets and totes.