Hand picking levels for pallet racking. Depending of the type of business, stock and picking levels it is often the case that pallet racking will be used as shelving for handpicked stock below 2 mtrs with upper beam levels holding pallets of boxes to replenish the handpicked stock. The obvious issue is the safe operation of pickers and forklift trucks the most sensible way of managing this is to only allow the fork lift trucks in at designated times when the pickers must clear this area. So it can be the case that the beams at the lower handpicked levels could be as rare at 2700mm clear entry with only 400kg UDL per pair of beams. These will usually be decked in timber, or chipboard decks whereas the beams carrying the pallets at a higher level will be 2700mm with a UDL of 2T per pair of beams.

 

Other popular options are to have aisles and racks for storing pallets with hand loaded shelving usually Longspan for the pickers to retrieve their orders from. Sometimes to take maximum advantage of the height available in the warehouse a two tier self supported mezzanine shelving system is used. This has the obvious advantage of give you double the linear meter age of shelving to pick from and hold stock or product.