On almost every site assessment I run, there is some rack protection in place. It is fitted, it is painted the right yellow, and the team assumes it is doing its job. Then we review the end frames where the aisles meet the main routes, and the same problems show up, whether the site is a food plant, a distribution centre or an automotive line.
That gap between protection being installed and protection actually working is where the risk exists. A loaded pallet rack that fails does not fail lightly. An upright buckles, the beams above it drop, and stock stored at height comes down on whoever is standing below. The downtime, the written-off stock and the HSE investigation that follows all matter, but they are the second concern. The first is the person in the aisle.
Below are the rack protection mistakes we find most often, what a racking inspection would flag in each case, and how to put them right before an impact becomes a collapse.
In this article
Mistake 1: Leaving rack ends unprotected where vehicles turn in
Mistake 2: Leaving damaged racking in service without grading it
Mistake 3: Fitting the wrong protector for the actual impact
Mistake 4: Positioning protection to the product spec, not the site
Most rack failures are not freak events. They follow a pattern, and the pattern repeats across sectors because the underlying decisions are the same. A site fits protection once, ticks the box, and never revisits whether it still matches the traffic, the loads or the damage the racking has already taken.
Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, every employer has a duty to protect people from foreseeable risk, and a rack that has been struck and left unchecked is about as foreseeable as risk gets. The HSE’s guidance for the sector, HSG76 Warehousing and Storage, sets the benchmark a court would measure you against. It asks for a nominated Person Responsible for Racking Safety, a three-tier inspection routine (immediate reporting, weekly visual checks and an annual expert inspection), and damage graded using the red, amber and green system set out in BS EN 15635.
The mistakes below are simply the points where that system breaks down.
The single most exposed point on any racking run is the end frame at an aisle entrance, and it is the one most often left bare.
End frames sit exactly where FLTs turn in and out of aisles, which makes them the most frequently struck part of the whole structure. Yet on a large share of the sites we assess, the leg protectors stop partway down the run and the ends, the highest-risk position, are left with nothing on them.
What an inspection flags: repeated impact marks, scoring or visible deflection on end uprights, often with no protection fitted at all.
The fix: protect the ends first, not last. Rack end protection needs to absorb a turning impact and hold the load away from the upright, which is where energy-absorbing polymer earns its place over a light clip-on guard. Clarity’s rack protection systems are built to take frontal and lateral impacts without floor fixings, so the end frame is shielded without drilling into the slab.
A dented upright is not a cosmetic problem. Damaged racking loses load capacity, and running it without grading the damage is the mistake most likely to end in a collapse.
We regularly see uprights with visible bends, missing baseplates or split welds still holding full pallets. Sometimes a guard has been knocked out of position months ago and never refitted. Nobody has graded the damage, because nobody has been made responsible for it.
What an inspection flags: this is the core of the annual expert inspection. Damage is scored red, amber or green under BS EN 15635. Red means offload and isolate that bay now; amber means action within a set period. Without a Person Responsible for Racking Safety and a weekly visual check, red-graded damage can sit untouched for weeks.
The fix: nominate a PRRS, run the weekly visual checks HSG76 asks for, and put a simple post-impact rule in place. If a rack is hit, it gets checked and graded before it is reloaded. Protection reduces how often this happens; it does not remove the need to inspect.
Protection rated for a light knock will not stop a three-tonne FLT, and rigid steel guards often pass the impact straight into the rack leg and the floor.
Two versions of this show up constantly. The first is under-specified protection: clip-on foam or thin plastic on a route carrying heavy, fast FLT traffic. It looks like protection and behaves like packaging. The second is over-rigid protection: a steel guard bolted hard to the floor that does not deform, so the force of an impact is transmitted into the baseplate, the upright and the concrete anchors instead of being absorbed.
What an inspection flags: cracked slabs and stressed anchor points around rigid guards, and displaced or shattered light-duty protectors that have already failed once.
The fix: match the protector to the vehicles and speeds on that route, not to the cheapest line on the quote. Energy-absorbing polymer flexes on impact and returns to shape, protecting the rack, the vehicle and the floor together.
Protection fitted to a generic spec often guards the wrong part of the rack, sits at the wrong height, or blocks the sightlines that would have prevented the impact in the first place.
A protector that shields the lower leg but leaves the baseplate exposed, or that sits too far from the upright to make contact before the vehicle does, is protection in name only. We also see guards positioned so they create blind corners, so the FLT driver cannot see the pedestrian, or the next vehicle, until they are already committed to the turn.
What an inspection flags: impact damage behind or beside fitted protection, which shows the guard is in the wrong place for the way the site actually moves.
The fix: position protection around real traffic flow, observed on the floor during a live shift, not off a drawing. Where sightlines are the underlying problem, LED projected floor markings reinforce where vehicles and people should be without adding another object to steer around.
Guards treat the symptom. If the same corner keeps getting hit, the cause is usually the layout, not the hardware.
When we see one end frame taking impact after impact, the question is not which guard to fit, it is why vehicles keep hitting that exact spot. Narrow aisles, two-way traffic where there should be one, poor separation between FLTs and people on foot: these are layout problems, and no amount of protection fixes them.
Regulation 17 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 requires traffic routes to be organised so that pedestrians and vehicles can circulate safely. Rack protection is one control within that, not a substitute for it.
What an inspection flags: recurring damage in the same locations, which points to a systemic cause rather than one unlucky driver.
The fix: treat protection as part of a wider plan that includes segregation, flow and visibility. Our guide to designing a safer warehouse layout walks through how the pieces fit together.
Honestly, the worst cost is not financial. A collapsing rack can seriously injure or kill someone standing in the aisle, and that is the reason any of this matters.
Beyond that, one failure rarely stays contained. Loaded racking can collapse progressively, so a single struck upright can bring down a run and all the stock on it. The site stops while the area is made safe and rebuilt. And if the HSE attends, the investigation usually opens with a request for your inspection records, your nominated PRRS and your damage reports, the very things the mistakes above leave missing.
Set against that, the cost of protecting the ends properly, grading damage and fixing the layout is small. That is the trade every site assessment comes back to.
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Key point |
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On most sites, rack protection is already installed. The failures come from what happens next: unguarded ends, damage left ungraded, the wrong protector for the load, guards in the wrong place, and layout problems that hardware alone cannot fix. |
If you want to know which of these five you are carrying, the quickest starting point is an honest look at your own end frames and your inspection records. If the records do not exist, that is your answer.
A Clarity site assessment puts a documented picture in front of you: where the protection gaps are, which racking needs grading, and what the layout is doing to cause repeat impacts. It is a paid service, and the fee is credited back against any supply and installation order that follows.
About the Author
Damian White is Managing Director of Clarity Safety and personally conducts the company’s site assessments across the food, manufacturing, automotive, logistics, medical and retail sectors.
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