It’s safe to say that there is shelving of some kind in almost every warehousing or other industrial operation, offices, and most commercial facilities. Even a sophisticated distribution center outfitted with AS/RS usually has fallback storage in the form of rack or shelving. For those applications that require a lot of heavy-duty shelving, though, issues of capacity come to the forefront.

A few years back, we had a customer who asked us to quote a good amount of rivet shelving (you might call it particle board, boltless, or by a brand like RiveTier or Penco’s Rivet Rite). It was a good sized project and that customer ended up buying it used from another company. He was happy with it right up until it collapsed and dumped hundreds of bins of aerospace components to the floor. The problem? He was storing something very heavy on either a shelf or on a post that couldn’t handle it. Once one of the shelves buckled, it set off a chain reaction that was kind of like dominoes and a whole lot of shelves went down. The components were similar looking, except for sizes, and it was pretty much a total loss.

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Are you ready for 2004 all over again? the roller coaster ride of rising steel prices and surcharges may be on its way back.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, steel prices are rising amid tightened supplies and robust overseas demand. For industrial and warehousing operators (and for material handling companies like us) the implications are obvious: prices are going to increase and they are going to be volatile in 2008. According to the Journal, “The worst-case scenario could be a repeat of 2004, when manufacturers of many products, from automobiles to washing machines, faced severe steel shortages and record-high prices.” The price of hot-rolled steel has increased about 6% in the past two weeks. There is about a 3-month supply of steel remaining, and shortages are predicted.

The takeaway: if you’re considering a large capital project like a conveyor or rack system that utilizes lots of steel, the time to pull the trigger is probably now, not later, to avoid a large hit on escalating steel prices.

The big news out of Washington the last couple of months has been on the tax rebate part of economic stimulus. What may have more impact on the economy, and will certainly have more impact on people in the warehousing or manufacturing business, are the business tax breaks that quietly came along with it. We’ll break them down into two primary areas…

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Cisco-Eagle and Hytrol Conveyor Company recently celebrated our partnership at CEI’s Dallas, Texas facility. Hytrol CEO Greg Goodner, Bill Hawthorne, Matt Farris, and Frank Nichols came to Dallas to present a plaque honoring Cisco-Eagle’s placement as one of the company’s top conveyor distribution partners in 2007. Cisco-Eagle typically finishes among Hytrol’s top 3 distributor/integrators, and recently passed $100 million in total purchases from Hytrol.

Since the gathering was a day before Goodner’s birthday, we honored him with a cake and happy birthday serenade.

PHOTOS: Greg Goodner | The Presentation

The National Crime Insurance Bureau estimates that over $1 billion of construction tools and equipment is stolen every year. Of course, if you’ve ever run a construction or renovation site, a large maintenance concern, a tool crib, or other industrial job site where plenty of valuable tools are there for the taking, that won’t surprise you in the slightest.

Everyone from Airline maintenance mechanics to assembly and maintenance techs face the problem. The loss of equipment & tools, the productivity dumps, and the climate of dishonesty they create are all drains on efficiency and profitability for just about every commercial operation. we’ve always said that half the security battle is in the storage methods; security begins with the way things are stored. It cannot be an afterthought…

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