Gaco Western, located in Waukesha, WI, is a manufacturer of spray foam insulation, silicone roof coating systems and a variety of waterproofing coatings for pedestrian and traffic decking. Gaco products cover millions of square feet of commercial, industrial and residential buildings. Over the past five years, business has really been booming for Gaco, as the company has seen 20 to 25-percent growth year-over-year. While that robust growth has been great for the company, it did provide some logistical challenges for the company’s warehousing and storage. "We had our production facility which included some storage space, plus we had three outside warehouses in the local area," says Mike Reher, Materials Manager for Gaco Western. "Even with those three outside buildings, we had simply outgrown our storage space. So about a year and a half ago, we purchased property to the south of our production facility and added an 85,000 sq. ft. warehouse to it." Even with an additional 85,000 sq. ft. of warehousing space, Reher and Gaco were cognizant of using that space as efficiently as possible. To ensure that they could do that, they called Wisconsin Lift Truck Account Manager Jim Prey to help design and lay out the new area. Prey looked at Gaco’s new area and also their existing storage and recommended moving the storage from conventional aisles to narrow aisles. "There was some apprehension in moving from 14 ft. aisles to 8 ft. aisles and from standard forklifts to narrow aisle forklifts," says Reher. "We had just used standard forklifts and had primarily bulk storage on the floor in our existing facilities with very little racking. We had run into limitations stacking our products and felt that our storage was inefficient without a racking system." Prey, who has worked with Gaco for years and is a […]