Safe Loading And Retrieval Push Back Rack System

Heavy Duty High-Density Push Back Pallet Rack System for Highly Effective Storage

Push back pallet rack system is a semi-automatic LIFO(last in, first out) high-density pallet storage system with an efficient inventory rotation rate, which is best suited for moderate mix, high volume SKUs.

In this system, each lane contains a pair of slightly inclined rails and a series of nested wheeled carts sitting on these rails. The rails tilt gently towards the pallet pick face where pallets are loaded and unloaded. And pallet cargoes will be placed on these carts which will be in charge of carrying pallets through lanes.

How does push back pallet rack system work?

When the lane is empty, all the carts are nested on top of each other at the front of the lane. When it is time to load pallets, the first pallet will be put on the top cart, and then the second pallet will push the first pallet to move forward one position and rest on the next exposed cart.

And so on, the newly stored goods will always push the former goods into the lane and take the first pallet position until the lane is filled with pallets in accordance with the above procedures. In general, the number of carts is one less than the number of pallets and the last pallet will directly sit on the rails. Usually, each lane can be designed to store 2-6 pallets.

As for unloading, inventory rotation direction comes conversely. The last stored pallet will be the first one to be taken out. During unloading, the pallet being unloaded acts as a brake for the pallets behind it. Once the front pallet is removed, under the force of gravity, the rear pallets will slide one position automatically toward the pick face for unloading. This process continues until the lane is empty.

Advantages of Push Back Pallet Rack System

• High-density storage: By making use of gravity, forklift operators can access pallets without navigating into lanes. Thus, a single aisle can service multiple lanes simultaneously, reducing the amount of aisles and leaving more space for storage.

• Quick product rotation rate: Because each pallet lane operates independently, different lanes can work together at the same time. Besides, pallets can automatically move to the pick face under the force of gravity and forklifts don’t enter the racks, greatly reducing handling time and improving the efficiency of both storage and retrieval.

• Less risk of collision: Forklifts only need to work at the lower end of the rack lanes but don’t need to enter into the rack structure, decreasing the risk of collision with racks.

• Great selectivity: Compared with other high-density storage systems like the drive-in pallet rack system, its selectivity is better since different SKUs can be stored in different levels of lanes and each level of lane is able to operate individually.

• Good compatibility: It has no special requirement for material handling equipment. Almost All types of forklifts, including counterbalance, narrow-aisle, and swing reach can be used in push-back pallet rack systems.​

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Tips for Push Back Pallet Rack System:

• It is ideal for warehouses that store a large number of products with moderate SKUs, and each SKU has a limited amount of pallets, requiring fast rotation.

• It is important to ensure that pallets are in good condition and designed to be compatible with carts. Broken pallets may impede the travel of carts.

• Regular inspection is necessary to guarantee the safety and normal usage of the system. Although the system is not easy to collide with forklifts, its components especially carts are prone to get damaged because of daily wear and tear. When performing checks, pay attention to find damaged frames, loose anchors, damaged carts and anything else that appears to be out of place.

• Compared with the drive-in pallet rack system, the push-back pallet rack systems can be designed with high storage density like drive-in pallet rack systems, but with faster inventory rotation. However, because of the cost of carts, the investment per pallet position in push-back pallet racks is comparatively higher than that in drive-in pallet racks.

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