A warehouse without equipment is like a house without furniture. In light of that, trolleys, trucks and other types of helpful machinery are essential things every facility of that kind should have. Depending on your needs, there are various factors that can have an impact on the choice of equipment for your warehouse.
Dolly Drums
Use
Dolly drums are made for the specific use of handling warehouse drums and transporting them from one point to another. Since a dolly drum is mainly meant to save you money in small increments rather than prevent unnecessary expenses in the future, it is limited to being used for only one item. If the majority of your inventory consists of drums with toxic waste, flammables or just good old commercial waste in them, then this is the safest and most convenient solution.
Do You Need Them?
Although a dolly drum is an investment that can save you money upfront, it can also be used as a solution in the long run in case you want to be able to use it in the next 10 or 20 years. Do you really need this? Maybe not, but it is always a better option than having a short term solution. Things like your working cycle, shifts and product flow should be considered when deciding whether or not you need dolly drums, meaning that the most expensive unit won’t always be the best one.
Buying Factors
Any piece of drum equipment, regardless of what it is, should offer the option to optimize each and every drum you have with ease. You should look for equipment that can be used with different types of drums and for multiple purposes, meaning it should be versatile enough so you don’t end up spending a fortune on dolly drums alone.
Safety is another factor with dolly drums and no matter how good your employees are at handling the equipment, they should always wear safety goggles, steel toe boots and hard hats as the minimal level of protection. Proper training, sightlines and product alerts also play a big part of creating safe working environment for the use of a dolly drum.
Consider what you want to achieve with a dolly drum. Obviously, ease of handling and safety are the two most important aspects. But what if you want to be able to work in a temperature changing environment or to be able to transport multiple drums? Then you’ll need to consider corrosion-resistant units and drum handling equipment that can lift, stack and roll the drums at the same time. You should also take into consideration the weight of the drums your employees will be handing or if they will need to be dumped and if damaging the drums is on the regular.
Forklift Attachments
Benefits
Since you are not going to be buying separate machinery for each operation, the cost of labour will be largely reduced since this way you won’t have to hire new employees for each machine. You’ll get the same function as you would otherwise, just without the expenses that come with it. There’s no room for improvisation when working with heavy loads, which is why forklift attachments are the best solution.
You will also notice an increase in productivity since there will be minimal effort in mounting the attachment – you will also save time and money on training your personnel and getting additional safety gear. Forklift attachments can also help decrease downtime and get your employees working with a different item way sooner.
Types
Rotators allow you to rotate the forks in a 360° revolving motion which helps increase productivity and limit downtime since it’s being used for inverting and dumping loads. The agricultural, waste/recycling and the food and beverage industries are the typical settings for this type of attachment.
Fork extensions are basically sleeves designed to make long and awkward loads simple and easy to handle since they help retain stability and truck manoeuvrability in normal operating conditions. This attachment is used mostly in shops, factories, warehouses as well as in the shipping industry.
The push/pull attachment is an inexpensive slip sheet that can be easily connected and disconnected on a conventional forklift and it serves to increase the shipping volume. Slip sheets help reduce packaging weight and obviously provide easy handling of goods which has been found beneficial mostly in the bagged goods and food and beverage industries.
With a multiple pallet handler, you are able to navigate through narrow aisles whilst being able to take fewer trips with double the channel capacity of a conventional forklift. This attachment also reduces the loading and unloading time and the time wasted on truck maneuvering. The multiple pallet handler is used in warehouses as well as in the bottling, shipping and brewing industries.
One of the most common attachments are side shifters which allow you to move a load from one side to the other when you want to make small adjustments to the pallet without moving the forklift. Side shifters help reduce fuel consumption and pallet damage whilst allowing you to load a pallet faster than usual, which is why they are used mostly in agriculture, construction, paper handling and the food and beverage industry.
