A trolley designer creates the trolleys that warehouses and storerooms rely on, and should do so without a “one size fits all” approach. There are all kinds of items that trolleys carry, from small boxes of screws to large sofas. A standard flatbed trolley cannot carry everything.
Why do businesses need custom trolleys?
Warehouse equipment manufacturers have a wide variety of warehouse trolleys suitable for small or large items. Retailers like Joules and Crew Clothing use the best type of trolleys that pick orders and take them to the packing station. Sometimes a new awkward-shaped or heavy product is added and these might require a non-standard trolley.
If a business has a new warehouse or modifies its existing one with narrow aisles, its trolleys could be too wide to be safely pushed between shelving racks. In these situations, they should call in the trolley designer for custom trolleys.
Custom trolleys start with a conversation
A new trolley design starts with a conversation between the trolley designer and the client. The designer needs to know exactly what a business wants and why the trolleys that the manufacturer already makes is not suitable. Ideally, this conversation happens at the workplace where the trolley designer can observe the current warehouse operation and the type of goods that the trolleys carry.
The trolley designer will probably also talk to the workers who use the trolleys for their input into the conversation.
After the trolley designer has a clear idea of what the client needs, they go away and sketch out the preliminary design. This can be simply modifying an existing trolley by making it in a custom size, or adding additional features such as clipboard or tablet holders.
A prototype trolley is manufactured and tested at the client’s storage facility before the final trolleys are fabricated.
Trolleys are manufactured in small batches by skilled metalworkers. It is cost-effective to make small quantities of the custom trolleys if only a few are needed.
Continuous design evolution
The other role of a trolley designer is to improve existing trolley designs. An advantage of Steely Products being both the manufacturer and supplier of trolleys is that we can work closely with our users to evolve our trolley designs. Our designers talk to equipment users to discover ways to improve them. The goal is to make equipment that exactly suits the company’s manual handling requirements.
Trolleys have been used for hundreds of years. They are a simple but effective technology that has evolved over the years. Once trolleys were made from wood, but modern commercial ones use strong tubular steel.
Steely has been at the forefront of evolving trolley designs for specialised use by the furniture, garment and window trade. We make trolleys to move everything from small boxes, to sofas, to large sheets of metal or glass.
If you need new trolleys, contact us using the form below. If we cannot meet your needs using one of our standard trolleys, our trolley designers will be happy to talk about making unique custom trolleys.
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