Crank out cantilever steel racks

The End of the Storage Scavenger Hunt: Reclaim Space, Time, and Safety with Herochu Crank-Out Cantilever Racks

If your business handles long materials—steel tubing, aluminum extrusions, bar stock, PVC piping, or lumber—you are intimately familiar with the daily drain on productivity and morale. The sprawling, tangled piles that consume vast swathes of your floor space. The frustrating, often dangerous, 20-minute scavenger hunt to locate and extract a single specific length from the middle of a stack. The ever-present risk of material damage, worker injury, and costly delays that looms over every retrieval. This chaos is not an inevitable cost of doing business; it is the direct result of using storage methods designed for boxes on a problem that requires length, weight, and precision.

The Herochu Crank-Out Cantilever Rack system is a fundamental re-imagining of long material storage. It transitions from a passive, obstructive holding pattern to an active, intelligent partner in your workflow. This is not a simple shelf; it is a high-density, high-access retrieval system engineered around a simple, powerful mechanical principle: bringing the entire inventory to the operator. Starting at $3,999 and fully customizable to your workshop’s exact dimensions and load profile, this system transforms your most chaotic area into a model of lean efficiency, safety, and control.

The Core Innovation: What Does “Crank-Out” Truly Mean for Your Workflow?

The defining feature of this system is the manually operated, fully telescoping arm. Imagine a heavy-duty, industrial-grade drawer, but one designed to be 25 feet long and support several tons of steel. Each arm is mounted on a precision carriage system of bearings and hardened steel rails. With the turn of an industrial crank handle, an operator can effortlessly glide the entire arm—and its full load—100% out from the rack’s main structure into the open aisle.

Let’s translate this mechanical advantage into your daily operational reality:

• Pinpoint Access Eradicates Search Time: The era of “digging” is over. Each SKU, each material type, each specific lot can be assigned to its own dedicated arm. When you need a 6-meter length of 2-inch schedule-40 pipe, you walk directly to its designated location, turn the crank, and within seconds, the entire bundle is presented directly to you and your overhead crane or forklift. There is no shuffling, no moving other materials, and no guesswork.

• The Forklift Becomes a Transport Tool, Not a Retrieval Tool: By drastically reducing the forklift’s role in the actual “search and extract” process, you achieve multiple wins. You save significantly on fuel and equipment wear-and-tear. More importantly, you eliminate the single greatest source of rack damage and material scuffs—forklift impacts. Your inventory and your investment remain pristine.

• A Foundation for Uncompromising Safety: The most hazardous part of handling long materials is often the retrieval itself. The risk of a stack shifting, a bundle unrolling, or a heavy item falling is ever-present. The Crank-Out system creates a controlled retrieval zone. The operator works from the side, in a clear area, with the load fully stabilized and presented before any lifting mechanism is ever engaged.

Engineered for Relentless Performance: The Anatomy of a Herochu Rack

In an industrial environment, simplicity must be backed by unyielding strength. The Herochu system is built on a philosophy of intelligent over-engineering, where every component is selected and fabricated for a long, reliable service life, a commitment validated by our CE, UE, and ISO 9001 certifications.

• The Structural Backbone: High-Strength Steel Frame: The upright columns and base structure are constructed from a defined grade of high-strength carbon steel, chosen for its exceptional resistance to deflection and deformation. This isn’t just “steel”; it’s a specific formulation engineered to handle the dynamic loads and constant stress of industrial use, ensuring the rack remains stable and true for decades.

• The Smooth-Glide Mechanism: Heart of the System: The carriage and rail system is the core of the product. We utilize sealed, high-load bearings and machined rails to provide a smooth, consistent motion even under the system’s maximum capacity. The manual crank offers fine control, allowing an operator to inch a heavily laden arm out with precision, a critical feature when working in tight spaces.

• Protective and Organizational Details:

  • UHMW Lined Arms: An often-overlooked but critical feature. A layer of Ultra-High-Molecular-Weight Polyethylene is bonded to the top of each arm. This creates an incredibly durable, low-friction, and non-marring surface that protects sensitive materials like polished stainless steel, anodized aluminum, or finished lumber from scratches and gouges.

  • Removable Pin Dividers: These sturdy, industrial-grade dividers act as bookends for your inventory. They prevent different lots, sizes, or materials from shifting and mixing, ensuring perfect organization and enabling accurate, visual inventory counts at a glance.

  • Customizable Support Trays: For storing shorter remnants, small-diameter rounds, or bundles of flat bar, these optional trays prevent valuable off-cuts from being lost or damaged, keeping every piece of material organized and accessible.

The High-Density Dividend: Doubling Your Capacity Without a Building Expansion

Floor space is one of your most valuable and finite assets. Traditional storage, with its mandatory wide aisles for forklift turning, is a grossly inefficient use of this space. It’s not uncommon for 30-40% of a storage area to be dedicated not to stored material, but to the empty space required to access it.

The Herochu Crank-Out system shatters this inefficient paradigm. Because access is achieved by cranking the arms out into a central aisle, the racks themselves can be placed side-by-side in a “deep-storage” or “drive-in” configuration.

This strategic layout delivers a dramatic spatial dividend:

• Eliminate Redundant Aisles: Instead of requiring one aisle for every row of racks, you need only a single, central access aisle. This one aisle services multiple racks on either side, as their arms crank out into the same space.

• Double Your Storage in the Same Footprint: By collapsing wasted aisle space, you can effectively store double the amount of material in the same square footage. For a growing business, this can delay the need for a costly facility expansion for years.

• Reclaim Your Floor for Profit-Generating Activities: The square footage you save can be repurposed for additional processing equipment (a new band saw or laser cutter), an assembly station, or other value-generating activities, turning a cost center into a profit center.

Seamless Operational Synergy: The Perfect Partner for Your Lifting Equipment

This rack is designed to be the ideal companion for your overhead lifting systems, creating a seamless and efficient “crank-and-crane” workflow.

• The Crane & Crank Partnership: The system is perfectly suited for facilities with overhead cranes, jib cranes, or gantry cranes. The workflow is simple and safe: the operator cranks the desired arm out, positions the crane’s hook or vacuum lifter directly above the fully exposed and stable load, and makes a clean, vertical lift. This one-person operation is vastly faster and safer than traditional methods requiring multiple workers and equipment.

• Universal Material Compatibility: The versatility of the system is a key strength. It is the optimal solution for a vast range of materials, including:

  • Pipes & Tubing: From delicate copper tubing to large-diameter steel pipe.

  • Bar Stock: Solid rounds, squares, and hex bars in all metals.

  • Structural Shapes: Angle iron, I-beams, channel, and rebar.

  • Extrusions & Profiles: Store custom aluminum extrusions without fear of damage.

  • Lumber & Panel Products: A superior solution for storing long lengths of timber and engineered wood.

A System Tailored to Your Reality, Not the Other Way Around

Your storage challenges are unique. The starting price of $3,999 is the beginning of a conversation, not the end. Our process is collaborative, beginning with an in-depth discussion of your specific needs.

• Configure Your Capacity: Choose the number of arms (layers), their vertical spacing, and their load capacity, which can be customized far beyond standard ratings to meet extreme demands.

• Determine Your Dimensions: Specify the required arm length to accommodate your materials, from compact 6-meter sections to massive 12-meter or even longer custom lengths.

• Choose Your Layout and Operation: Opt for single-sided or double-sided units, and select between the standard manual crank or an upgrade to an electrically-powered glide system for the ultimate in effortless operation.

Stop accepting storage chaos as a fixed cost. The Herochu Manual Crank-Out Cantilever Rack provides a reliable, cost-effective, and powerfully efficient solution that puts you in complete command of your inventory. It is an investment that pays for itself through recovered labor hours, eliminated material damage, reclaimed floor space, and a fundamentally safer work environment.

Contact a Herochu storage consultant today. Let us understand your inventory, your space, and your workflow challenges. We will provide a tailored design that brings ultimate order, efficiency, and safety to your long material storage.