What Is Cantilever Racking?
  October 21, 2024      Warehousing
Warehouse racking isn’t just all about pallet racking. There are different ways to store goods in warehousing, and one of these ways is with cantilever racking. When storing things in a warehouse, it’s important to use the right kind storage; the kind of storage that suits what’s being stored. For a lot of things stored in a warehouse, it’s often most convenient to store of those things on pallets, then it’s easiest to store those pallets on pallet racking. And there are different kinds of pallet racking that are designed for specific types of storage.
Cantilever racking is simply a type of racking designed for a specific task. That task is storing longer items.
What Is Cantilever Racking Used For?
As mentioned, cantilever racking is useful for storing long items like piping and lengths of wood. Pallet racking can be good for storing items of uniform size that fit into slots of specific heights and widths, but for other items, something else is needed.
Cantilever racking is designed with arms sticking out as cantilevers (hence the name), meaning that support struts don’t get in the way of storage. This allows for long items to be stored without support structures getting in the way, allowing items to come directly on and off the racking easily. In this way, forklifts can easily be used to store and remove items from the racking.
Any long item can be stored on cantilever racking easily. As already mentioned, it’s often good for piping or lumber, but it can also be used to store lengths of wire or rolls of carpeting. Basically any long item that wouldn’t fit on pallet racking or shelving.
Cantilever Racking Isn’t A Replacement For Shelving
Industrial shelving can be useful for storing items that are palletised or that may be too awkward to fit on pallet racking, but it’s different from cantilever racking. As mentioned, cantilever racking doesn’t have vertical support struts that get the way of storing longer items, meaning it’s perfect for longer items. Shelving, on the other hand, has vertical supports that make it difficult (if not impossible) to store long items.
With that in mind, cantilever racking also often lacks decking that allows for items of all lengths to be stored on it. A limitation of cantilever racking is that items need to be long enough to sit on the cantilever arms because there’s no support structure beneath them. In situations where items are too short or small, standard industrial shelving, or even general pallet racking may be a more suitable storage solution.
But Cantilever Racking Can Be Customised
All of this doesn’t mean that cantilever racking can’t be customised though.
One main customisation of cantilever racking is adjusting the heights between cantilever arms as well as the angle at which they’re mounted. For some items, having the arms completely horizontal is fine, but for other items like piping, it’s usually advisable to have the arms angled to prevent the piping from rolling off the racking.
Beyond that, cantilever racking can be further customised to allow it to support a variety of weights and lengths. Here at A1 Precision Solutions, we’ve even custom fabricated cantilever racking to have decking on it. This essentially creates very long space shelving that can be adapted to store items of various sizes and lengths.
Is Cantilever Racking Right For You?
Cantilever racking may be a good solution for your warehouse storage, but other solutions are also available.
In the world of warehouse storage, there are so many options, it’s often a good idea to talk to an expert. Because of this, get in touch with us to discuss your storage needs. We’re happy to help.