Pallet Jack

Pallet jacks are perhaps the easiest to use among all the equipment in the warehouse. They are used to lift and transport pallets around the warehouse. The limitations of pallet jacks is that they can only lift a pallet high enough off the ground to allow the pallet to be transported. Therefore, for binning or retrieving purposes from high shelves, appropriate equipment such as an order picker is still needed.

There are many types of pallet jacks with different functions. This post will cover two of the most widely used pallet jacks.



The first type is the conventional type which is normally used in warehouses. It serves basic functions like lifting of a load and moving it around the warehouse. Different sizes of pallet jacks can withstand different loads. For example, a smaller jet can hold a maximum weight of 1000kg while another pallet jack with a wider distance between the forks can hold a maximum weight of 3000kg.





More pictures of the pallet jack can be found here -->
http://www.materialflow.com/Bishamon-Pallet-Jacks.htm#BBSPJ





The second type of pallet jack is one which has an inbuilt weighing scale. After a pallet of goods have been shrink-wrapped and waiting to be shipped, a shipping mark has to be attached to the pallet stating the ship-to address. Other essential information to be included in the shipping mark includes the physical dimensions of the carton, as well as the weight of the entire pallet. Thus, using the pallet jack with weighing functions, the trouble of lifting the loads up and down the weighing scale can be avoided.








More examples of pallet jacks with a built-in weighing scale can be seen in the link below -->
http://www.centralcarolinascale.com/pallet.htm



In most warehouses, there are usually two sections namely the incoming and the outgoing. Incoming would be doing the receiving and binning of goods while the outgoing team would be doing the picking and packing of goods. Therefore, warehouses normally do not require too many pallet jacks with weighing functions. This is because operations of the incoming team as well as the outgoing team in charged of doing picking do not require the use of a pallet jack with weighing function.