When a rack carries wooden or plastic pallets, the weak point is often not the steel structure. It is the pallet base. In Project 14346, the rack layout was designed around a 1100 x 1100 pallet footprint, so that the beams could sit where the pallet actually supports load, not where a generic drawing says they should be.
Why the pallet feet decide the rack detail
If the beams sit between the pallet support points, the load is forced to span a gap. On a wooden pallet, this can twist a stringer or crush a block foot. On a plastic pallet, it can concentrate stress on the molded feet or runners and initiate slow deformation that only appears after repeated cycles. The rack still looks strong, but the load path is wrong.
That is why the Project 14346 brief did not treat the rack as a fixed standard. It treated the pallet design as the starting point. The beams were positioned to match the pallet support feet, so that the load could go straight down into the steel structure instead of being pushed through a weak section of the pallet.
What Project 14346 specified
The documented project used a 1100 x 1100 pallet reference and 50 x 2.5 mm uprights. This is already a clue about the engineering approach: the rack was being tuned as a system, not assembled from a single stock outline. The upright size, beam spacing, pallet support points, and total load height all had to work together.
For buyers, this matters because the right answer is not always "make the rack stronger." Often the right answer is "make the rack stronger at the exact place where the pallet transfers load."
Wooden pallet vs plastic pallet: the problem is similar, but not identical
Wooden pallets often fail at the stringer or block under repeated point load. Plastic pallets often fail differently: the foot area can creep, warp, or lose geometry after heat, moisture, or long storage cycles. The beam rule is the same in both cases, but the detail is not.
That is the trade-off. A project-specific rack can better protect the pallet, but it gives up some interchangeability. If you want a rack that serves many pallet pools, you generally need a more tolerant internal layout. If you want to protect one pallet type with repeatable quality, you must tighten the geometry around that pallet and accept the narrower usage range.
How load height and pallet size change the answer
Beam alignment cannot be separated from total stack height. If the load height plus the pallet is too high for the chosen stacking pattern, the top unit can sway even if the lower support is correct. If the pallet footprint is changed from 1100 x 1100 to another size, the support points also move. This means the rack design, fork entry, and stacking clearance need to be reviewed again.
In practice, the customer should specify four things together: pallet size, support foot location, load height, and the number of stacking layers. That is the cleanest way to avoid the common mistake of matching the outer structure first and then the load path.
This is a project detail, not a universal standard
Rerack is built for custom engineering, not for a fixed catalog geometry. The same product family can be adjusted for temporary warehouse layouts, returnable steel stillage loops, and palletized goods that need nested empty returns. But the exact beam placement in Project 14346 should not be copied for every order without checking the pallet design.
Use this rule: if the pallet feet are known and stable, align the beams to them. If the pallet pool is mixed or the support pattern is uncertain, widen the engineering window and test the real pallet before freezing production. That is how you protect both the product and the load.
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