About Platform and Stock Trucks

Material handling gets ignored until someone counts the steps. In a stockroom or fabrication shop, most of the time lost is not in the work itself, it is in walking parts from where they live to where they are needed. A platform truck or stock truck turns that into one trip, and because the load stays on the cart it also stays organized on arrival.

What a Stock Truck Is

A stock truck is a welded steel cart on casters with one or more shelves between the ends, built for repeated heavy transport rather than occasional use. The frames here are welded rather than bolted, which is what keeps them from loosening and rattling after a few hundred loads. Ours are 14 gauge steel finished in powder coat, with one model built in heavy-gauge mesh for loads where you want to see through the sides and let debris fall out.

Deck Footprint and Sizing

Overall footprints in this collection start at 26 by 66-1/2 inches and run up to 46 by 80-1/2 inches, with 30, 32, and 38 inch widths in between and shorter 54-1/2 inch models for tighter rooms. Every unit stands 56-7/16 inches tall overall. Size the truck to your narrowest aisle and your tightest corner first, not to the biggest load, because a cart that cannot turn where you need it is worse than one trip too many.

Fixed Versus Adjustable Shelves

Shelf count runs from one to four across these models, in both fixed and adjustable configurations. Fixed shelves are the stiffer, simpler choice when the load is consistent and you want maximum rigidity. Adjustable shelves earn their place when the same truck has to carry tall containers one day and flat stock the next, since you can reset the spacing instead of wasting the vertical space above short parts. Four-shelf trucks maximize the number of separated levels, while one and two shelf models leave open height for bulky items.

Who Uses Them

Warehouses and stockrooms moving inventory to pick stations, fabrication shops staging material to and from machines, maintenance departments carrying tools and spares across a plant, and assembly lines feeding parts to the bench. Anywhere the same route gets walked several times a day with something in hand, a stock truck pays for itself in steps saved.

Related Categories

Stock trucks feed the rest of the shop. Roll material to a station built on our industrial workbenches, unload small parts into parts bin storage cabinets or a space-saving Rotabin revolving shelving unit, and put what needs securing into steel storage cabinets. When the same material has to leave the building with a crew, jobsite storage boxes handle the transport and the lock-up.