Herochu Plate Steel Rack for Sheet Metal Storage – 3000 × 1500 mm Pallets Handled in a 2 m Cube
Built to order from $3,680. CE, EU and ISO 9001 certified.
A 5-ton block of 3000 × 1500 mm plate looks innocent on the truck; on the floor it becomes a 40-square-foot tenant that refuses to split the rent. The Herochu plate steel rack evicts the waste by storing five palletized loads in a footprint smaller than a parking space. Manual pull-out drawers deliver each 1,000 kg layer to an overhead crane in under thirty seconds, no power, no fork truck ballet, no operator climbing. The result is a 30 % denser warehouse and a laser that never waits for material.
Pallet-First Thinking
Standard pallet plus plate equals 210 mm. We refused the industry habit of rounding up to 300 mm and charging you for air. Drawer clearance is 250 mm, leaving 40 mm of breathable space for crane slings or vacuum pads while keeping overall height at 2000 mm. That means the top of the fifth drawer sits below the average plant ceiling beam, so you store five full loads where yesterday only three sat on the floor. The 1577 mm handle height keeps a 5th-percentile female operator in an OSHA power-zone; no step stools, no strained shoulders.
Triangulation That Kills Deflection
Each drawer rides on dual bearing rollers mounted to a 6 mm cold-formed C-channel spine. Triangular gussets transfer rolling load into the upright at 45°, cutting deflection to 0.8 mm at rated capacity. A T-track anti-derailment lip captures the roller even if the floor is ±¼ in out of level—common in 1960s mills where plate service centers operate. The 1.5× safety factor is not marketing; it is stamped on every beam and verified by third-party load test witnessed by TÜV. Rated 10,000 cycles, the rollers are grease-packed and sealed, so grinding dust cannot turn bearings into sandpaper.
Full-Extension, Zero-Sway
Drawers extend 100 %, exposing the entire pallet to an overhead vacuum lifter or C-hook. A 40° door opening angle prevents the sheet corner from catching the frame when the crane swings. Chamfered edges on the front lip guide pallet jacks without chewing the wood; replaceable HDPE wear strips snap in when they finally scar. Visual load indicators—red bars that appear when 800 kg is exceeded—warn the operator before the last plate is stacked, eliminating the guesswork that bends drawers.
Space Recovery in Real Numbers
A conventional block stack of five pallets needs a 4 m aisle plus 1 m clearance on three sides: 20 m². The Herochu rack occupies 4.5 m². In a 2000 m² service center that switch returns 775 m² of productive floor, enough for an additional laser cutting table that invoices $180 per hour. Payback occurs at 120 shifts; everything after that is margin.
Installation Without Civil Works
The rack ships as welded modules that bolt together with Grade 10.9 hardware. Two men and an overhead crane assemble the first bay in 70 minutes; each add-on bay takes 35 minutes. Anchor bolts are M16 × 140 mm and require only 3000 PSI concrete—standard 6-in warehouse slab. No footing, no epoxy, no core drill. Integrated lifting eyes are cut from the same beam, so you never hunt for balance points or rig slings around painted surfaces.
Surface That Outlives the Lease
Electrostatic polyester-epoxy powder is applied at 2.5 mil face, 2 mil edge, then baked 20 minutes at 390 °F. Salt-spray rating is 1000 hours; red-rust creep <2 mm. Optional hot-dip galvanizing adds 3 mil for outdoor storage beside the rail spur. Color is your choice: 5010 gentian blue, 7035 light grey, or corporate Pantone matched at no charge. Touch-up aerosol ships free for the life of the rack.
Safety That Satisfies the Inspector
Automatic drawer locks engage at 50 % extension, preventing roll-out under seismic or fork impact. Overload protection is mechanical: when 1200 kg is sensed, a shear pin trips and the drawer locks closed—no electronic sensor to fail in coolant mist. Aisle-side uprights wear replaceable rubber bumpers rated for 3 mph forklift collision. Post-installation, we supply a load plaque and inspection checklist that meets OSHA 1910.212 and CE EN 15635, so the inspector signs and leaves.
Industries Already Saving Floor
Steel service centers in Cleveland, automotive blank lines in Spartanburg, and aluminum distribution in Rotterdam run the same rack. Whether you handle 5-ton mild steel master plates or 500 kg aluminum blanks, the beam spacing and roller pitch remain identical; only the drawer divider changes. That modularity protects your capital if product mix shifts next quarter.
Lead Time That Respects Cash Flow
Standard powder-coat bays ship in 10 business days; galvanized in 15. We keep 1.2 million lb of wide-flange beam in Cleveland and Houston, so “out of stock” is not vocabulary. A DXF of your floor plan returns a stamped drawing, anchor map, and freight tariff within 24 hours—no login wall, no spam funnel.
End-of-Life Value, Not End-of-Life Loss
Steel is 59 % post-consumer, 93 % domestic melt. At end-of-life the rack commands 9–12 % of purchase price as scrap or 28 % as resale on the used-equipment market—documented in our last four auction results. Depreciation becomes an asset, not a write-off.
Send a pallet height, a weight list, or a photo of the plates currently blocking your aisle. We will return a quote that includes freight, anchors, assembly wrench, and a bottle of touch-up paint. Stop donating rent to dead floor space; let Herochu turn every kilogram of plate into profit that slides out on demand.
