When you’re operating forklifts and other machinery in confined (and sometimes very confined) areas, it’s inevitable that the structure of your industrial warehouse storage system is going to take the odd whack, particularly at its lower levels.

The problem is that, over time, repeated bumps and clangs can cause damage sufficient to raise concern and even threaten worker safety and racking integrity. Certainly, it could be more than enough to show up on your next warehouse racking damage survey.

Yet whilst you can’t do a great deal about the occasional lapse of human judgement, you can limit the damage to your Warrington pallet racking. Column guards at the corners of lane entry points shield uprights and ensure that, if there is some form of collision, it’s the easily replaceable guard, not the racking, that bears the brunt.

And as the guard should be, as the HSE puts it, “conspicuous”, there’s less chance the forklift driver will hit the guard in the first place.

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When to install Warrington pallet racking protection

The problems in fitting warehouse storage guards and other protection devices arise when you attempt to ‘retrofit’ them, that is, install them once the rest of your pallet racking system has been designed and installed.

Racking protection guards aren’t big or cumbersome, but if they’re to do their job effectively they do need some space in which to be installed. Plan the protection devices after the storage system has been installed and the risk is you’ll leave too little space for them. Rather than reducing the risk of damage, too little space could leave your racking open to more collisions.

So if you can, plan the protection devices as part of your industrial racking design, and make them an integral part of your Warrington pallet racking installation.

To do that, or for help in retrofitting pallet protection to an already installed system, call Rack-Master on 01422 300 644.

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