Pallet Conveyors for Clothing Warehouses

A pallet conveyor moves the whole pallet — a thousand pounds or more of cartons at a time — so that forklifts do not have to. Where carton conveyors handle individual boxes, pallet conveyors form the heavy arteries of the warehouse: they carry full pallets of clothing from the dock to the palletizer, from the palletizer to the stretch wrapper, and from wrapping to the staging lanes and rack aisles. In an apparel distribution centre receiving and shipping palletized cartons all day, a short run of pallet conveyor at the right place removes dozens of forklift journeys, and with them the congestion, damage and risk that forklift traffic brings.

Types of Pallet Conveyor

The workhorse is the chain-driven live roller (CDLR) conveyor: a series of heavy rollers turned by a chain running along the frame, able to move loaded pallets steadily and to accumulate them with controlled back-pressure. Drag chain conveyors carry the pallet directly on two or three strands of moving chain and are simpler and tougher still, well suited to pallets in poor condition or to loads on skids. Between and around these straight sections sit the components that make a system: right-angle transfers that change a pallet's direction, turntables that rotate it for wrapping or for entry into a rack aisle, and pallet dispensers that feed empty pallets one at a time into a palletizing cell.

Pallet conveyor is specified by the pallet, not by the product. The pallet's size, its board direction, whether its base is a full perimeter or open stringers, and the condition of its bottom boards all decide which conveyor type will run it reliably. Apparel warehouses receive a mixture — standard domestic pallets, import pallets of several sizes, and slip-sheet loads — so the system designer needs the real range of pallets the building handles, including the worst one, before choosing rollers, chain strands and transfer mechanisms.

Capacity and speed are modest by carton-conveyor standards and that is fine: a pallet conveyor line typically moves a pallet every half-minute or so, matching the rate of the palletizer feeding it and the wrapper clearing it. What matters is reliability under load — a stalled pallet line stops the machines at both ends of it — and safe accumulation so that pallets queue without being pushed into each other.

Where Pallet Conveyors Earn Their Place in Apparel Distribution

The classic apparel layout is a cell: cartons arrive on carton conveyors, a palletizer builds them onto pallets, the pallet conveyor carries each finished pallet through strapping and stretch wrapping, and a forklift or an automated transfer takes the wrapped pallet away to storage or staging. Pallet conveyor joins those machines into one continuous operation in which no one drives between stations at all. The same conveyor run in reverse serves inbound work, carrying received pallets from a checking station to the rack aisles' transfer points.

Forklift reduction is the real return. Every pallet moved by conveyor is a forklift journey that does not cross pedestrian routes, does not queue at the wrapper, and does not risk a fork through a carton of garments. In buildings where the dock, the palletizing area and the shipping lanes are laid out in a line, pallet conveyor also fixes the flow: pallets can only travel the intended route, in the intended order, at the intended rate, which keeps wrapping film use, staging space and dock appointments predictable.

The limits are layout and flexibility. Pallet conveyor is fixed infrastructure — it occupies floor, it crosses aisles only at bridges or gates, and rerouting it when the building's operation changes is a project. Warehouses whose mix of work changes constantly may be better served by forklifts and pallet trucks alone; warehouses with a stable, high-volume pallet flow — the normal case in apparel distribution — recover the investment in labour, damage and safety terms.

Pallet Conveyor Companies

Specifying and Maintaining a Pallet Conveyor Line

Begin with the pallet survey: sizes, weights when loaded with the densest product (wet denim and fabric pallets weigh far more than tee-shirt pallets), bottom board condition, and whether slip sheets or double-stacked pallets will run on the line. Then set the pass height so the line meets the palletizer's discharge and the wrapper's infeed, plan the accumulation zones, and place the transfers and turntables where the flow genuinely turns — every mechanism is a cost and a maintenance point, so a straight line that works beats a clever one that jams.

Maintenance is straightforward but relentless in a clothing building: lint, thread and strap offcuts collect around chains and rollers, and a cleaning routine is part of the design, with access panels where debris gathers. Chain tension, roller bearings and transfer mechanisms get scheduled inspection, and photo-eyes are kept clean and aligned — a pallet line that stops for a dirty sensor stops the palletizer and the wrapper with it.