Pallet Rack Accessories

Pallet Racking & Accessories Buying Guide

Decking is what actually carries the load. On a pallet rack the beams set the levels, but they do not support anything between them. Decking is the surface that spans beam to beam and turns an open bay into a shelf you can set totes, cases, or odd-sized pallets on. Vestil's wire decking is rated around 2,500 lb per level and comes in usable lengths of 46, 52, and 58 inches, the dimension measured front-to-back between your beams. Get that number from your rack, not from the pallet: an 8 ft beam level usually takes two decks and a 12 ft level takes three. The crown-style decking is a lighter option near 650 lb for smaller loads, and open-area decking widens the panel to 96, 108, or 120 inches. Buy decking first, because it decides what the rack can actually hold and it runs from roughly $63 up to about $88 a panel.

Wire, solid, or open decking and the sprinkler question. The choice between wire mesh and a solid deck is often a fire-code decision rather than a preference. Open steel mesh lets overhead and in-rack sprinkler water fall through to the levels below, while a solid plywood or steel deck blocks it, which is why many warehouses with sprinklered racking are required to run open-grid decking. Wire mesh also lets you see product, drains dust and spills, and will not warp or splinter the way wood does. Match the capacity to how the load sits: deck ratings like Vestil's 2,500 lb figure assume a uniformly distributed load spread across the whole panel, not a single concentrated point, so a narrow heavy item on an open deck can exceed the rating even under that total. Center loads and spread them across the surface.

Back guards and netting keep product out of the flue and the aisle. The gap behind and between racks, the flue space, exists so sprinkler water and heat can move, and it has to stay clear. Back guards and netting keep boxes, shrink-wrap, and loose stock from being pushed off the back of a level into that flue or down into a pick aisle. Vestil sells this two ways: welded-wire back-guard panels in sizes from 96 x 48 up to 144 x 60 inches that mount to the rear of the frame, and clip-style backstops, flush or offset one to six inches, that fasten to the beams in four-packs. Nylon rack netting rated around 2,500 lb covers taller openings where a rigid panel is awkward, from about $115. None of this is fall protection for people; it stops product, and it works alongside the load rules your rack was designed under, such as the RMI standard ANSI MH16.1.

Guide stops, gates, sumps, and the housekeeping pieces. Several accessories here solve the small problems that wreck a rack over time. A pallet guide stop, about $149, sits at the back of a level so a lift operator sets the pallet in the same spot every time instead of pushing it into the flue or shorting the rear beam. Pallet rack security gates, near $1,295, lock off a bay for controlled or high-value stock. A pallet rack sump, roughly $585 to $936, turns a level into spill containment for drums or chemicals so a leak does not run down through the rack onto product below. Rounding it out are pallet-rack trash-bag holders and a pallet-rack lifting dolly rated 750 lb for repositioning loaded pallets at floor level. Each of these is cheap next to the damage and downtime it prevents.

Gravity-flow shelving for FIFO picking. Flow shelving replaces a flat level with an inclined bed of rollers or wheels, so cartons load at the back and roll forward to the pick face on their own. That gives you first-in, first-out rotation and denser picking without a forklift touching every case. Vestil's carton flow racks build up as full units in 3 and 4 ft widths with three to five shelves, and you can add dividers, rollers, or a wood top shelf as the workflow changes, with pieces from about $20 up to a little over $3,000 for a complete bay. To convert pallet-rack beams you already own instead of buying a freestanding unit, the pallet-rack gravity-flow shelves and gravity-flow inserts drop into an existing bay, rated around 25 lb per square foot. Use flow where pick volume is high and rotation matters.

When the job needs a rack that is not a pallet rack. Long, loose, or awkward stock does not belong on pallet beams, and Vestil groups the alternatives on this page. Cantilever racking, sold in standard-duty, heavy-duty, structural, and galvanized kits from around $45 a component up into the thousands for a full run, has no front column, so lumber, pipe, conduit, and bar stock load straight onto the arms with nothing in the way. Horizontal and vertical sheet racks hold plywood and panel goods on edge or flat, bar-stock trees and pigeon-hole racks sort remnants by size, and dunnage racks lift stored goods a few inches off the floor for airflow and forklift access. These are freestanding units, not pallet-rack add-ons, so size them by their own footprint and capacity rather than to your beam depth. And if you are extending or repairing an actual pallet rack, we carry Vestil beams, upright frames, and frame spacers rated to 5,000, 6,000, and 7,000 lb.