Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:37 — 14.1MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Hello and Can you believe another week’s wrapping up! Marty here with you with the Warehouse and Operations as a Career Podcast. Two weeks ago, we mentioned Narrow Aisles while talking about Stand up forklifts and forward steer and reverse steer units and I thought it’d be interesting to talk about that history a little bit. I reached out to WAOC’s good friend Joe, as you’ll remember from several earlier episodes Joe is a General Industrial CSHO or certified safety and health official and one of our Go To Op’s guys when we’re looking for experience with something or anything to do with Safety.
Joe, how have you been doing?
Joe I cut my teeth on a sit-down counterbalance Hyster lift moving washers and dryers and heavy meter parts from the docks and rail cars to a staging dock all day long. I wasn’t doing much racking of product and really didn’t have much occasion to go into the aisles at the time. It was a great job and gave me a lot of experience unloading containers and trailers with my lift, but it was mostly hauling freight and not really storing product. I did that for about 3 years and then found me a job with a National distribution facility where I had to quickly learn the storage aspect of my chosen profession. It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t know quite as much of being one with my lift as I thought I was. Hauling and storing product are two different things, aren’t they?
So, Joe, I’d like to talk about the Narrow Aisle in warehousing today for a minute. The facility I was with was kind of land locked or there were other companies on either side of ours so we didn’t have any room to grow. I’m talking back in the early 90’s, around 1993. Warehouse space was expensive at the time and really there wasn’t a lot of new buildings available, real estate was expensive back then and companies were looking for every efficiency they could find and making due with what they had! I think our building was like 160,000 square feet and housed our dry, cooler and freezer departments. I remember all our storage aisles were 11’4” wide. They were a bit tight to operate the sit-down in but it was very doable, a good operator could pretty easily and safely make the swing and 90 degree turn into the slots. It didn’t take me long to learn to store freight and I developed those skills just with some on the job training. As I mentioned real estate was expensive at the time and really in short supply. My company had the opportunity to purchase the building next door and turned it into our freezer facility, ended up giving us an additional 80,000 square feet which eased some of the congestion but due to our growth we needed quite a bit more. That’s where the corporate engineers helped solve our problems. It was determined that if we flipped our pick path and shortened the width of the aisles to 9’2” we could pick up the additional aisles and slots we needed for that growth and that’s how I became a Standup Reach truck driver! We traded all our sit-down lifts in for narrow aisle standups!
I think the typical aisle width for a counter balance is like 11 to 13 ft
Stand up reach is like 8 to 10 ft
And then you have the very narrow aisle turret truck operating in a 6 to 7 ft aisle! That amazes me and I really want to operate one someday!
So Joe, are you seeing more warehouses moving towards narrow aisle’s now, is it the cost of real estate driving the move? Or more like efficiencies?
I guess it only makes sense, with the cost of land, or even the availability of land it only makes sense to grow up instead of out! I’m seeing stack heights or rack heights extending up as well. Most of the facilities I visit have like 24, 28 and even 35 ft lift heights but I notice on the Raymond Corp website they have 542” reach truck available so I assume someone is using 45ft height! I’ll include a link to their website in today’s show notes, WAOC is not an affiliate in any way I just happen to like their equipment and I noticed it lol. And I guess with the conveyer equipment available now it’s possible to go even higher?
I mentioned conveyer systems, I guess with mezzanines and carousels and even robotics being utilized today we’ll only see the warehouse getting taller and taller!
In our last two episodes I mentioned forward steer and reverse steer standups and we’ve received quite a few questions about what’s the difference. Can you explain it to us Joe?
A few months back you we’re telling all out listeners about The Distribution Training Center, Its looking good and about ready to open. Anything you’d like to share with our listeners here in Texas Sir?
Well it’s that time again, Joe, Thanks for calling in today, I really appreciate the time you spend with our group, I know you’ve got plenty of other things going on!
I appreciate each of you listening in and I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as we did putting it together for you! I’ll include a few webpages in today’s show notes if you’d like to read up on some of the things or thoughts we mentioned, they’ll be on our website at Warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and if you have a minute I’d appreciate the Like and follow on Facebook and Twitter where you can find us @whseandops. Keep working on your Plan, your Goals and above all Be Safe doing it!
https://www.distributionpropertysolutions.com/warehouse-aisle-width/
https://www.fallsway.com/blog/warehouse-operations-finding-your-aisle-dimensions/
https://www.warehouseiq.com/forklift-aisle-dimensions/
https://www.cisco-eagle.com/blog/2013/05/31/key-considerations-for-warehouse-aisle-widths/
http://www.wiu.edu/vpas/ehss/manuals/forkliftoperator.php
http://www.masco.net/safety/forklift_safety/forklift_training_web_section1.html
https://www.forkliftaction.com/forum/discussion_9121.htm
https://careertrend.com/how-4813089-operate-stand-up-forklift.html