| Deciding factor | Selective beam rack | Drive-in rack |
|---|---|---|
| SKU mix | many SKUs, mixed | one product, uniform lot |
| Access | any pallet, direct | first in, last out |
| Space use | aisle per row | no aisle, ~30% more |
| Forklift | loads from aisle | drives into the bay |
| Best fit | mixed / rotating stock | blocks, cold store, AGM |
| Cost | more floor per pallet | fewer pallets for floor, harder to retrieve |
| Risk | each pallet reachable | one skew kills the lane |
Is drive-in ever worth it for mixed stock?
Rarely: LIFO and the strict column rule mean a single low-turn item buried at the back stalls the whole lane, so the space you saved in footprint you lose to removal time. Keep mixed or rotating stock on a selective beam rack and use drive-in only for the block-shipped heavy lot.
Does drive-in suit cold store?
Yes, and this is one of its strongest fits: cold storage is expensive per cubic metre, so the extra third of positions per aisle footprint pays directly, and uniform lots that ship as a block navigate LIFO cleanly.
Decision rule
A selective beam rack is the denominator every denser system is measured against: it bills floor for readiness, and the moment the stock turns as one block rather than in mixed rotations, the aisle price stops paying. Drive-in collapses those aisles into the storage cells themselves, trading LIFO-only access and a strict one-SKU, one-footprint column rule for up to a third more pallets per footprint — a trade that is only ever a win on a uniform, block-shipped lot, not on a bin of mixed SKUs that must all be pullable at once.
All figures on this page are illustrative sample values, not measured specifications.