Pictured above: red-oxide base plates, anchor bolts and uprights from a welded steel rack in our project archive (V5-1). The base plate and its fixings are two of the things an inspection looks at on every frame.

Most people who ask what a rack inspection costs are really asking two things at once: "what will I be charged?" and "what am I getting for it?" The first has a short answer. The second is where two quotations that look similar turn out to be very different.

Here is what we publish. An SS EN 15635 rack inspection from us typically costs S$3.50 to S$6.00 per upright frame, with a S$1,200 minimum per site visit. That is the inspection itself. Any repair, beam or upright replacement that the inspection turns up is quoted separately, after the report tells you what is wrong. The rest of this article is about reading that number: what a frame is, why the minimum matters more than the rate for most warehouses, and what to ask any inspector before you accept a price.

What a "frame" is, and why you should count them yourself

An upright frame is one pair of uprights, braced together, standing at the end of a bay. Because neighbouring bays share a frame, a run of 10 bays has 11 frames, not 10 or 20. Pricing per upright frame means the number you are charged for depends on how frames are counted, so ask the inspector to state the count on the quotation and check it against your own walk down the aisles.

A quick way to count: for each run, number of bays plus one. Add the runs together. Back-to-back runs and runs split by a column or a door are easy to get wrong, which is exactly why the count should be written down before the visit and not discovered afterwards.

The S$1,200 minimum is the number that decides most jobs

Here is the arithmetic on the published figures. We are reading the S$1,200 as a minimum on the visit total, which is how a minimum charge normally works. Confirm that on your own quotation.

• 100 frames: S$350 to S$600 at the per-frame rates, so the S$1,200 minimum applies.
• 200 frames: S$700 to S$1,200. Still at or under the minimum.
• 300 frames: S$1,050 to S$1,800. Around here the rate starts to matter.
• 500 frames: S$1,750 to S$3,000.
• 1,000 frames: S$3,500 to S$6,000.

So on those rates, below roughly 200 to 340 frames you are paying the minimum whatever the exact rate turns out to be, and above that the per-frame rate takes over. The practical consequences are not obvious until you see them:

• A small warehouse pays the same for 40 frames as for 150. If you are under the minimum anyway, there is no saving in inspecting only the runs you think are bad. Inspect the whole site.
• Every visit carries the minimum. A separate call-out after a forklift knock to look at three frames is a full visit. Where the knock is minor and your own team can record it, it can be cheaper to log it and have it picked up at the next scheduled inspection, rather than paying for an extra visit. Where it is a leaning or bowed upright, do not wait: unload the bay and the bays either side first, as set out in a bent racking upright: repair, replace or de-rate.
• Racking you have just moved or inherited is a good reason to book one visit for all of it. See taking over a warehouse with racking already in it.

What the fee should buy you

The price is only comparable if the work is. Under SS EN 15635 principles, our inspection physically looks at every upright frame for plumbness, impact damage, missing safety pins, beam deflection and base-plate fixings. It also covers load notices, because a run with no load notice is itself a finding, and whether your aisle widths still suit the trucks you actually drive. What you receive is a written report with a green, amber and red triage and remediation cost estimates.

The three colours are the part you act on:

• Green is within tolerance.
• Amber needs remediation, which our report treats as within six months.
• Red needs immediate action and the bay unloaded.

What each finding means in practice is in what a rack inspection actually flags. The point for cost is that the report is what turns "we paid for an inspection" into a list of what to fix this month and what can wait.

What the inspection fee does not include

The fee covers the inspection and the report. It does not cover the repair. If the report finds an amber or red frame, replacing a beam or an upright is a separate piece of work, priced from the report's remediation estimate. We do not publish a price for that, because it depends on what is damaged, the racking system, and whether replacement components have to be fabricated to match your existing steel. Quote-only, after we have seen it.

That separation is worth insisting on from any inspector. If a quotation is a single lump sum with no stated scope, you cannot tell afterwards whether the repair estimate was part of what you paid for, or a second bill.

Seven things to ask any inspector before you accept a price

1. Is it per frame, per bay, per visit or a lump sum? The unit decides how the total moves when you add a run.
2. How many frames are you pricing, and how were they counted? Get the number in writing.
3. Is there a minimum per visit? Ours is S$1,200. Another firm's may be lower or absent, and the comparison only works if you know.
4. Does the report grade findings green, amber and red, with an estimate for each repair? A list of dents with no grading leaves you to decide what is urgent.
5. Which standard is the inspection carried out under? Ours is SS EN 15635.
6. Can the same firm carry out the repair, and can replacement parts be made to match your system? Otherwise you take the report to someone else and start again.
7. What do you get at the end that an auditor or insurer will accept? If an insurer is the reason you are inspecting, see what insurers actually ask for.

The cost of not inspecting is not the fee

A racking warranty will not help here. Forklift impact is accidental damage, not a defect, so no manufacturer warranty covers it, and our own warranty excludes it too. That is the whole reason periodic inspection exists: it is how impact damage is found before a loaded run fails, and it is how you can show, later, that you looked. The warranty side is covered in what a racking warranty covers and what it never will.

We would rather you keep inspection as a yearly habit than pay for it once, after an incident. Most clients settle into an annual inspection once the first one turns up anything in the amber category: at that point it stops being paperwork and becomes a live list.

How to get a quote that is easy to compare

Tell us the warehouse location, roughly how many runs or bays you have, and when the racking was last inspected. A rough count by run is enough to start; we confirm the frame count when we visit. If you have load notices, the last inspection report or a layout drawing, send a photo of them, as keeping those to hand makes any inspection quicker (see racking records: what to keep).

Message us on WhatsApp for a rack inspection quote, or read the rack inspection page for what the service covers. Our inspection figures are typical, not a quotation, and repairs are quoted after the report.

Related reading: briefing forklift drivers after a rack inspection.