Direct access to every pallet, adjustable as your stock changes. The most widely used racking system in warehousing.
If you carry a lot of different products and need to reach any of them at any time, selective racking is almost always the right starting point.
Two upright frames, a pair of load beams, and a pallet on top. That simplicity is the whole advantage: a forklift reaches any pallet directly, without shifting anything else, and your operators need no special training or equipment.
Beam elevations unclip and move, so when your pallet heights change the racking adapts rather than being replaced. We supply it in roll-formed steel for standard warehouse loads, and structural steel where the loads are heavier or the environment is harder on the frames.
Every system is engineered to the loads you actually store, and signed off on site before you put a pallet on it.
Selective racking is built to order. These are the ranges most Ontario warehouses land in, not fixed limits.
| Specification | Typical Range |
|---|---|
| Pallet Access | 100 percent, every position directly reachable |
| Storage Density | Low. Roughly 40 to 50 percent of the floor goes to aisles |
| Stock Rotation | FIFO or LIFO, entirely up to how you run it |
| Upright Height | Commonly 8 to 30 ft, limited by clear height and sprinklers |
| Beam Length | Usually 96 in or 144 in, sized to two or three pallets |
| Beam Capacity | Typically 3,000 to 6,000 lb per pair, engineered per bay |
| Aisle Width | Set by your lift equipment, generally 10 to 13 ft |
| Steel Type | Roll-formed for standard duty, structural for heavy duty |
| Best Suited To | Many SKUs, mixed pallet sizes, frequent picking |
Figures are typical, not a specification. We size the system to your actual pallet weights, dimensions and clear height during the free site assessment.
Selective suits most warehouses, but not all of them. If your operation looks like the right column, we will tell you and point you at the system that actually fits.
These are the conditions where nothing else beats it.
Most Ontario warehouses land here. Book a free site assessment and we will confirm it against your pallet counts.
In these cases selective will cost you floor space you cannot spare.
Try drive-in, push back, pallet flow or cantilever instead.
It depends on the bay size, the beam capacity and how high you build, so anyone quoting a price before seeing your building is guessing. What we can say is that selective is consistently the lowest cost per pallet position of any system we supply. Tell us your pallet count and clear height and we will come back with real numbers.
Yes, and this is one of the main reasons people choose it. Beams unclip and reposition on the upright, so you can reset elevations as your pallet heights change. One caution: changing beam levels alters the rated capacity of the frame, so the capacity signage has to be updated and in most cases the system needs reviewing before it is reloaded.
They solve opposite problems. Selective gives you access to every pallet but spends nearly half your floor on aisles. Drive-in stores far more in the same footprint but you can only reach the pallet at the end of the lane. If you have many SKUs, choose selective. If you have few SKUs in high volume, drive-in will hold considerably more.
Whatever you already run, in most cases. Selective works with standard counterbalance forklifts, reach trucks and walkie stackers. The equipment decides the aisle width rather than the other way round, which is why we ask what you operate before we draw the layout.
Often, yes, and it can cut the cost significantly. The conditions are that the frames and beams match your load requirements, the components are compatible with each other, and the finished system can still be certified. We price new and used side by side and tell you honestly which one we would choose.
The four systems people most often weigh against selective.
