Wheels for steel shelving

[VM]

There is a standard for steel shelving size and construction, with heavy steel angle uprights with 1/4" holes at about 1" intevals. 'Standard' at least in that I've seen a ton of it in warehouses, etc. and it's carried by a lot of hardware stores. I'm sure most know from that brief description.

Oddly enough, I have not been able to find anyone who makes wheels for it. Even some of the warehousing operations could use that. It would entail only a regular caster-type wheel with a fitting to accommodate the steel angle. My guess is that the product does exist somewhere. Anyone know?

[hallerb]

havent seen it except that stainless roll about shelving for food industry.

its probably a concern over shelves being unstable........

[Hustlin' Hank]

There are metal shelves with casters, but putting casters on shelving not only decreases the shelves load capacity, it can make them easier to tip.

I have metal shelves in my garage with casters. I love them. They are easy to move when its time to clean, but I am very careful when rolling them around. I bought mine at Sam's club a few years ago. They are chrome. Many hospitals, restaurants, butchers use basically the same thing except theirs are stainless steel.

Hank

[Nate Nagel]

AKA "Metro" shelving. I bought some years ago from a used restaurant equipment place. Expensive even then (I think $80 for a set of four shelves, poles, etc.) but worth it. They're holding up some spare transmissions, brake drums, etc. right now and not appearing to be bothered by it at all.

nate

[RicodJour]

Ditto. I switched over from the slotted angle shelving to the chromed wire shelving on casters. It's made things a lot easier on me. I have two 4' wide by 6' tall units that I roll out of the garage and set up on the driveway on either side of the garage door. I rigged up a couple of tarps for shade and light rain protection, and the setup allows me to have all of my most common tools at my fingertips, keeps bird crap, leaves and raindrops off of my tools/work, and sets up or breaks down in about five minutes.

As far as the OP's question, I have never seen casters on the slotted angle shelving. A lot of that type of shelving is heavy duty and you'd need some heavy duty (read expensive) casters. The lighter duty slotted angle shelving would scare the beejezus out of me if it were on wheels - the uprights flex too much.

R

[VM]

Curious now about what this is. Does anyone have a link to a picture?

Not sure if we're talking about the same kind of shelving, as there are no slots. This stuff is heavy, with absolutely no flex in the uprights. There are holes at about 1" intervals along the length of the uprights, and the shelves bolt in with 1/4" bolts.

I guess I could mount an extra shelf on the very bottom and put a piece of 3/4" ply under it for mounting regular casters. I've done that before, but it was a bit of a hassel. No real stability problems though. On another one I used steel 'corner brackets' with less stable swivel wheels...the ones with threaded posts. Even more of a pain.

This one is only about 3 feet high, so I'm not worried about stability. I'd just like to be done with it without cutting plywood, etc.

[gfretwell]

The stuff you have depends on the gravity connection to the floor to the dimensional stability to hold it together. If you are moving it, build a pallet under it and put wheels on that.

[LdB]

Check out scaffolding. I use a painters scaffold in my shop as a mobile shelf. You're hinting a big shelving so you might want to give this a good think. A six foot high shelf on wheels is one thing. A twenty footer falling over on someone's head is another story.

LdB