Commercial Shelving Installation in Utah

Boltless and rivet shelving assembles with beams that seat into keyhole slots in the posts, so crews move quickly and levels are easy to re-space later. The decisions that matter are beam style, deck material and level heights; our guide to single vs. double rivet beams covers capacity. Freestanding boltless units usually stand on their own foot plates, but tall or tied runs may still need anchoring where your building official requires it.

See boltless shelving installation for the national service page, or boltless shelving in Salt Lake City.

Steel clip and angle-post shelving takes longer per unit. Shelves clip or bolt to the posts, sway braces or closed panels square the unit, and add-on units share posts with the starter beside them, so the first unit in a run has to be plumb or every unit after it inherits the error. Closed units with back and side panels, dividers or drawers add more parts per section.

Compare open and closed builds on our industrial steel shelving page, or all shelving families side by side on industrial shelving.

Bulk rack and wide-span shelving carries heavier boxed stock and often uses wire mesh or particle board decks over long beams. Deck orientation, beam locks and the gap between the bottom level and the floor are set at install, and these units are the ones most often tied back-to-back or anchored. See bulk rack shelving.

Wire shelving is the lightest to install: split sleeves on the posts set each shelf height. Crews still level it on uneven floors and confirm caster or foot choices. If you are assembling a few units yourself, our wire shelving installation guide walks through it; product options are on wire shelving.

Bin shelving, drawers and parts rooms have the most pieces per section: dividers, drawer units, bins and label holders that have to go in the right place for the parts room to work on day one. We coordinate the location plan with the install so the crew is not guessing. See bin shelving in Utah and our tool crib and MRO storeroom planning guide.

The Young Ford parts room in Brigham City is an example of steel shelving combined with matching drawer cabinets in one run.

High-density mobile shelving is a different kind of installation: floor rail is set and leveled first, sometimes with a ramp or raised deck, and carriages are built on the rail and tested before shelving goes on. Floor flatness and seismic design drive the schedule. Utah mobile projects run through our mobile shelving in Utah team; see also earthquake-ready mobile shelving planning.

Seismic anchoring. Much of Utah, including the Wasatch Front, sits in an active seismic area. Tall shelving, back-to-back runs and anything near an exit is commonly anchored to the floor, tied together overhead or tied to a structural wall. The requirement comes from your local building official and the adopted building code, not from the shelving catalog, so we plan anchoring during layout and confirm it before install.

Our shelving anchoring and seismic guide covers anchor types, slab questions and overhead ties in more detail.

Sprinkler clearance. Fire codes require clear space between the top of stored material and sprinkler deflectors; 18 inches is a common figure under NFPA 13, but your fire marshal sets the requirement for your building and storage. Plan top shelf heights with that in mind so the top level is usable without overloading it.

Aisles and exits. Shelving cannot narrow a required exit path or block exit signs, panels or fire equipment. Confirm aisle widths with your fire marshal before the layout is final, especially when adding units to an existing room.

Permits. Most freestanding shelving does not need its own permit, but tall storage, high-piled storage and storage mezzanines can. Where a permit or engineering is needed, it belongs in the schedule before install day, as it does for pallet rack installation and mezzanines.

Not every job is new shelving. Many projects involve extending a run, changing level spacing for new stock, moving shelving to a new building or reusing part of an old system in a new layout.

Adding on: add-on units share posts with the unit beside them, so the make, series, depth and height have to match. Send photos of a post and a shelf edge, plus any labels, and we will confirm compatibility before quoting.

Reconfiguring: boltless and wire shelving re-space easily; steel clip shelving re-spaces too but takes more time per level. Changing heights on loaded shelving means unloading those levels first.

Relocating: teardown, labeling, transport and reinstall are planned together, with a check for missing or damaged parts before reinstall. Dealership parts rooms follow the same logic in our parts department relocation guide.