What is the ideal aisle width for reach trucks vs forklifts?
Quick Answer
Reach trucks usually need 8.5–10-ft wide aisles, while standard counterbalanced forklifts work best in 12–14-ft aisles. Choosing the tighter reach-truck layout boosts storage density but demands clear sight lines and good floor conditions. For forklifts, wider aisles allow safer turns and faster two-way traffic.
Detailed Answer
Warehouse layout design starts with the space between racks. For reach trucks, an 8.5- to 10-foot clear aisle lets the mast extend and retract without the wide swing of a counterbalanced chassis. This narrow-aisle approach can add 20-30 percent more pallet positions, making it popular in high-volume e-commerce facilities where every inch matters.
Conventional forklifts, by contrast, need about 12–14 feet to turn, tilt, and travel past oncoming traffic. The extra width improves visibility and reduces rack impact risk, which our warehouse safety audits show is a leading cause of unplanned downtime.
When Warehouse Cubed’s warehouse consulting services team models a new storage layout, we compare equipment specs, load size, and pick velocity to balance density and flow. If you want to shrink aisles for reach trucks, we often pair them with higher pallet racking systems, wire-guided paths, and floor flatness testing to keep operators efficient and safe. Where wider forklift aisles remain necessary, such as staging heavy outbound loads, we create hybrid zones, add protective guarding, and mark clear travel lanes.
The result is a material handling systems integration plan that maximizes cube utilization today while leaving room for future automation like automated storage and retrieval systems. Visit our Layout and Design page to learn more about how we can support your business.