In these days of fast deliveries, daily ecommerce orders, and constant product flow, it can be handy to understand just how much your pallet racks store per day.

Pallet racks are still among the most popular and widely-used warehouse shelving solutions, but a lot of warehouses don’t quite use them to their full potential. Whether due to unused space or sub-optimal storage methods such as incorrect pallet spacing, pallet racks often aren’t used as effectively as they could be to store the highest amount of products in the safest and most convenient fashion.

One of the best ways to figure out how your pallet racks are working is to track your daily pallet rack load. Particularly for more customer-facing warehouses, products can come in and out with a surprising quickness, and one of the best ways to make your pallet racks more efficient is to understand exactly how many items they face every day.

• How many products do you store currently? Do you have a total SKU count – not for individual items, but for each specific product type?
• What’s your average daily delivery size like? When your trucks show up during the day, how many items are you scanning in – and then how many of them become palletized? Do all your items wind up on pallet racks, or do some of them get sent off to your wire shelving or metal shelves elsewhere in the warehouse?
• How big are your pallets? While the pallets you use may be more standardized in size, do you track how many items are stored on them? Do your workers make sure each pallet carries a specific load to prevent overhang or spillage between different pallets, affecting the amount of space each pallet can take up?
• How much active space is available on each pallet? Particularly if you use pallet rack safety guards to prevent falls, injury, or damage, you need to get accurate measurements of exactly how much space you can use on each rack.
• How much of your outgoing product comes from pallets? A lot of warehouses tend to fall into the trap of only using pallet racks to store items that are still palletized, which means there tends to be much more incoming product and less outgoing product. This can lead to a lot of congestion and wasted space, so use this time to determine how much product is still lingering on your pallet racks each day as more items come in.

By getting in the habit of making these counts on a regular basis, you can use the space afforded by your pallet racks more effectively, while still ensuring safety for both your workers and your products.