Mitsubishi Transportation sorely needed a new facility to increase their production capabilities. The company, which makes components for passenger rail cars, had reached its capacity in its current building. Cranston Material Handling (McKees Rocks, PA) had helped Mitsubishi set up its original storage racks and the customer was confident in their ability to design a new, more efficient facility. "The challenge in the existing facility was not only that it was terribly overcrowded, but the ceilings in it were very low. The racks that we put into that area were inefficient because of that low overhead height," says President David Cranston Jr. "One of the criteria for the move was that they wanted to double their storage height so the ceilings in their new building would allow them to install racks that were 24 ft. high." David Cranston Sr. set about devising an efficient layout for the new facility that would hold the number of pallets in the space that Mitsubishi had requested but would also safely store the 18 ft. crates and other heavy loads that could weigh up to 8,000 pounds per shelf level. "When they set up this division initially, we used standard wire decking, which, over time because of the heavy point loads, didn’t hold up very well," David Jr. says. "We went with a new decking product from Ohio Gratings called PressLock that allowed us to point load and gave them a very nice surface that would hold up essentially indefinitely." In addition to the PressLock solution, Cranston also used Steel King SK3000 structural rack with 20 ft. long beams to achieve the heavy capacities Mitsubishi required, as well as a Gorbel workstation crane to load and remove the chassis from the crates. All told, this project ended up being over $150,000. In addition […]