Pictured above: heavy-duty racking built around cable drums from our project archive (V5-1). These are not pallets and they were never going to sit on a standard beam pair — the rack was designed around the load rather than the other way round.

Almost every conversation about pallet racking assumes a pallet. A rectangular timber base, a known footprint, bearers running the right way, sitting neatly across a pair of beams. Racking catalogues are built on that assumption and so are most quotations.

Then the racking goes in and reality arrives on a lorry: a supplier's pallet that is deeper than yours, a batch of oversized crates, drums that were never on a pallet at all, lengths of material that hang off both ends. Somebody puts them on the rack anyway, because the rack is there and the goods have to go somewhere.

This is about what actually changes when your loads are not standard pallets, which of those situations are fine and which are genuinely dangerous, and what to establish before racking is specified rather than after it is installed.

How a pallet is actually supported

Start here, because everything else follows from it. In standard selective racking, a pallet is not sitting on a shelf. It is bridging a gap, supported only where its bearers land on the two beams. The beams run left to right along the aisle face; the pallet's bearers run front to back and rest on them.

That means two things are doing the work: the pallet's own bearers, and the two beams. Change either and the support changes.

The four ways a load goes non-standard

1. Deeper than the frame

A pallet deeper than the racking was designed for overhangs at the back. A small, deliberate overhang is a normal part of many designs. An unplanned one is not, because the space behind the load is doing a job: it may be the flue space in a back-to-back run, the clearance to the next aisle, or the clearance under a sprinkler. An overhang consumes whichever of those is there and nobody notices until an inspection does.

2. Shallower than the beam spacing

This one is worse and less obvious. A pallet whose footprint is too small for the gap between the front and rear beams is not properly landed on both. In the worst case it can be pushed through, and even short of that it is being carried on far less bearing than the design assumed. A small pallet on wide-set beams looks completely normal from the aisle.

3. Bearers running the wrong way

This is the one that catches experienced people out. The same pallet turned ninety degrees is a different structural situation. Turned so its bearers run parallel to the beams instead of across them, the pallet is no longer transferring load through its bearers at all — it is being carried by its deck boards, which were never intended to span the gap.

It looks identical from the aisle. Everything is square, nothing is hanging over, and the pallet is loaded the way it always is. It is simply resting on the wrong parts of itself.

4. Not a pallet

Drums, coils, reels, crates without bearers, loose bundles, long goods. These have no bearers to land on beams and often no flat base either. Round loads want to move. Long goods want to overhang. Putting them on standard beams is not a variation on pallet storage, it is a different storage problem that happens to be in the same building.

What actually fixes it

All of these are solvable, and most are cheap when they are designed in rather than retrofitted:

• Pallet support bars. Front-to-back bars between the beams, so a load that does not land properly on the beams lands on the bars instead. The usual answer to undersized pallets and to mixed pallet sizes in the same run.
• Decking — mesh, steel panel or board. Gives a continuous surface, which suits crates, cartons, loose items and anything without bearers. Worth knowing: decking has its own load rating and it does not raise the beam rating. A deck makes a level usable, not stronger.
• Frames and beams chosen for the real load. Deeper frames for deeper pallets, beam lengths chosen for the actual footprints rather than the catalogue default.
• Cantilever racking for long goods. Arms with no front column, so length is the point rather than the problem. This is the right answer for bars, pipes, timber and boards.
• Purpose-built support for round loads. Drums, reels and coils need cradles or a structure designed to stop them moving, as in the photograph above. They are not a pallet problem with a pallet solution.

The mistake that costs the most: measuring only your own pallets

When racking is being specified, everyone measures what is in the warehouse today. That is the wrong sample, because the loads that cause problems are usually the ones you do not control.

Inbound goods arrive on your suppliers' pallets, and those vary by supplier and by country. Some will be deeper, some shallower, some heavier, some in poor condition. You will not be turning that lorry away. If the racking was specified on your own neat pallets alone, every one of those inbound variations becomes a daily judgement call made by whoever is on the forklift.

So before racking is specified, put together an honest picture:

• Every pallet footprint you actually receive, not just the one you use.
• The heaviest unit load, and how you know — a weighed figure rather than an assumed one.
• Anything that is not a pallet at all, and roughly how much of it.
• Whether any of it is likely to change in the next couple of years.

That list is the difference between racking that fits your operation and racking that fits a catalogue.

Two rules that do not bend

Whatever shape the load is:

1. Capacity is per level and per bay, and both have to hold. Each beam level has a rating, and the whole bay has a total that its upright frames were designed for. Staying inside one and not the other is not compliant.
2. The load notice has to describe what is actually stored. If the storage arrangement changes — different loads, different supports, different beam positions — the notice is part of what changes. A notice describing an arrangement that no longer exists is worse than no notice, because people trust it.

If you already have the racking

Most of the time the fix is not new racking. Support bars or decking can usually be added to existing runs, and mixed-size loads can often be zoned so odd sizes go to bays set up for them instead of wherever there is a gap. What matters is that somebody looks at what is actually on the rack rather than what was meant to be.

Two situations do need stopping sooner: pallets turned so their bearers run parallel to the beams, and loads that are not landing properly on both beams. Neither is a matter of tidiness.

The short version

• A pallet is supported only where its bearers land on the two beams. Everything follows from that.
• Too deep eats the flue, aisle or sprinkler clearance. Too shallow may not be landed on both beams at all.
• A pallet turned ninety degrees is a different structural case and looks identical from the aisle.
• Drums, coils and long goods are a different storage problem, not a pallet variation.
• Support bars, decking, the right frames or cantilever fix all of it — cheaply when designed in.
• Decking has its own rating and never raises the beam rating.
• Measure the pallets you receive, not just the ones you own.

Not everything you store is a standard pallet? WhatsApp us on 9107 2601 with photos of the loads and what you receive, and we will tell you what the racking needs to be. Our systems and load classes are on the pallet racking systems page, and rack inspection is on our services page.

Related reading: choosing a load class · decking: steel panel, wire mesh or chipboard · boltless shelving vs pallet racking