Hello and welcome to Premier Handling Solutions’ video series on running a safer and more efficient warehouse. Today’s video will answer the important question on everybody’s minds: just what is a pallet jack?

What is a Pallet Jack?

Put quite simply, a pallet jack is a tool utilized around your warehouse to lift and move pallets with relative ease. They’re much easier to use than your bare hands, as well as being cheaper and more efficient than a forklift for smaller loads.

Pallet jacks have many names you may hear around a warehouse too like a pallet truck, jigger or pump truck. Pallet jacks are generally simple machines, and are just wheels forks and the hydraulic jack itself. For the most part, you’ll find pallet jacks to be around the same sizes to move around standard sized pallets. You’ll find each jack’s fork to be about 7 inches across with a foot or so between them. Fork lengths also match up very closely with pallet sizes, usually measuring 36, 42 or 48 inches in length. Each jack will raise a load around 7 inches off the ground.

Pallet jacks come in many different types as well, helping you easily handle just about any palletized load you can imagine.

The most common type of pallet jack is the manual pallet jack, which is controlled and powered completely by the user. Much like a jack for a car, you can pump the pallet jack’s handle by hand to raise your pallets off the ground and easily wheel them around your warehouse.

Manual pallet jacks branch off even further though, as you’ll also find extended length pallet jacks for wide loads with forks measuring up to 8 feet long. Some manual pallet jacks have a scale placed right on them to meet your loading requirements more easily or to make sure you don’t overload your pallets. There are also all-terrain pallet jacks that are built with large wheels for uneven ground. Some pallet jacks are built for high capacity loads and some to help you turn and spin pallets more easily.

There are also powered pallet jacks that operate much as the manual jacks do but all the “hard” work is done for you! Electric pallet jacks both lift your pallets and move around for you. This is especially useful for heavy loads where you just have to press a few buttons, stand on a platform and throttle around your warehouse!

Thank you for stopping by to watch the Premier Handling Solutions video series on running a safer and more efficient warehouse. Be sure to check back later this week when we shift our focus from “what” to “how” and discuss how to use a pallet jack.