I recently visited a storage facility that had experienced a racking collapse. A whole single fixed rack had come down involving some 120 pallets.
Looking at the twisted frames that were piled up outside the store I noticed that the orange load beams had been bolted onto the blue rack frames. Bolting load beams to the frames certainly stops beams from being dislodged when a pallet is lifted too high on removal but it can also be problematical.
The spring clips or drop-in pins are supplied by racking companies for a reason. They are designed to shear or release when an excessive load is applied to them. This means that, should a frame be hit by a forklift, the load beams on either side of the frame will come down but the collapse may be limited to this area. With bolted beams there is a far greater chance that the whole rack will be pulled over as the bolts will not shear in the same way.
I would therefore advise that load beams are not bolted to frames but that the normal chips or drop in pins are used. Where visible these should be checked on a weekly basis by a competent person in the warehouse.
Racking can be subjected to occasional knocks and any resulting damage needs to be assessed often to avoid serious problems going unnoticed. However, do not attempt to fix the racking yourself. Rather contact the racking company who did the installation.
Contributed by: James Cunningham, Managing Director, Barpro Storage SA
