I'll add that there are operations where items come in floorloaded in containers and may be shipped out without pallets (floor loaded or parcel shipments) therefore they don't want to invest in and handle a bunch of slave pallets. In addition, the wrapped load without the pallet may be smaller than the load on the pallet due to using standard pallets but having various sizes of loads (some smaller than a pallet) so there may be some depth and width space savings there in addition to the height savings associated with the pallet.
These operations typically floorstack most of these loads in bulk floor storage, but may also have some need for storage in selective rack.
A lot of white goods in Europe don't come on pallets, they come wrapped in polystyrene & plastic wrap.
Saves vertical space height by the height of the pallet (~4"-5") at each pallet beam plus the floor level bays. Space saving is based on the number of total storage bays. Remember the use a of of Euro pallets on the other side of the pond and as I recall they are higher vs our GMA style pallets.
What would be the advantage of using carton clamps instead of pallets?
Yes, once the racking was all corrected, working with the clamp trucks was fine.
The company only fitted out 1 block of a large warehouse for clamp truck operation.
The clamp attachments where bought to retrofit on to existing trucks.
Racking company just supplied & installed to the plans they where given, they had no input or say on the original design plan.
Wow.
I'm surprised they didn't come down, observe the problem, tell you to only put 2 on the shelves, pat themselves on the back, and claim success.
I don't think calling that a mistake even comes close to describing what they did. If they would have run their plan by either the clamp truck vendor or the racking vendor, this almost certainly would have been caught. And even without outside input, why they wouldn't at least just buy and set up a couple sections of rack as a test before doing the whole warehouse is beyond me. Unfortunately the type of people that make this level of bad decisions tend to not learn from their mistakes-or even acknowledge them.
Anyway, thanks for the input. Once they got the beam widths right, did everything work OK?
Somedays your a diamond, some days a chunk of coal.
Previous warehouse I looked after decided to get some clamp equipped trucks to store new white good's in the rack.
Suits from upstairs came & measured up, decided exactly what they wanted, came up with some plans & had a company come in to install all the new racking to the plan they gave them.
It all went horribly wrong when they tried to load the rack & realise the suit who had measured up had forgot to take into account the extra width of the clamp blades & also that the clamp need's to be opened slightly to drop the load.
The gap the suits had stated on the plans was just for 3 item's width without any extra space for the clamp blades, all the racking had to be dismantled again & reinstalled after the suits adjusted the measurements.
The only people laughing where the racking company as they got paid a 2nd time to come back & put the suits mistake right.