Often times the best storage solution for your warehouse is a combination of storage racks including selective pallet rack, drive-in rack & push back rack. If you have small quantities of pallets per SKU than selective pallet rack is your best choice. If you have many pallets per SKU than you want to consider a high density or a high efficiency storage system like Drive-In Rack or Pushback Rack.

Selective pallet rack offers you tremendous selectivity but you give up more floor space to aisles. I would consider selective pallet rack as the most popular style of pallet rack. Selective rack costs approximately $40.00 per pallet position. Drive-in rack is a high density, medium efficiency system that sells for roughly $60.00-$80.00 per pallet position. Pushback racking is a high density, high efficiency storage system that ballparks for $160.00-$180.00 per pallet position. Pallet flow rack is high density, high efficiency and the purest form of first-in, first-out. Pallet flow rack is also the most expensive at approximately $240.-$260.00 per pallet position.

If you use a stop watch to time a forklift driver picking pallets from drive-in rack and then timed them picking pallets from a pushback rack system you will find that pushback rack offers you a tremendous time savings on every pallet picked. Drive in rack requires that you drive into the rack system while pushback rack has pallets flow to the front of the system for picking.

Food distributors prefer pushback rack because they can ship more pallets out the door in a shorter period of time and over the course of a year that efficiency helps pay for the increased cost of the system. You need to determine if your pallets move in and out of your rack system often enough to justify the extra cost of pushback rack.