Part 1 of 3 Warehouse Striping

If you are a decision maker on a large warehouse line striping project then you are going to want to look at this three part check list. Over the next week we will take a look at the most important factors to consider when hiring a striping contractor. Hopefully, this list can save you headaches and hassles from making the wrong choices.

Line Striping in a Warehouse California.

1. Contractor License:

Most states have an online tool to verify the status of a contractor’s license. Our license’s status, for instance, can be confirmed on the CSLB at http://www.cslb.ca.gov/. On this site, there is a license status check as well as the ability to check current bond, insurance, and workers compensation information. A national list of links to state licensing boards can also be viewed at http://www.clsi.com/state_contractor_license_board.htm

2. Insurance and Workers Compensation:

This is probably the second most common trap customers encounter. They hire a licensed company that has allowed their insurance to lapse or simply never had any in their company’s history. This leaves companies with huge exposure to medical claims and lawsuits. I have personally been an expert witness on cases where large companies hired small and uninsured contractors in order to save a few hundred dollars only to end up paying millions from the litigious situations they create. To avoid these pitfalls, only do business with licensed and insured contractors.

3. Legal Paint Selected:

When it comes to warehouse line striping, there are many companies claiming they are qualified to execute warehouse striping work when they actually are not. A great question to ask your contractor to help you assess their qualifications include, “What are the laws regarding air quality and my paint choices?” Good contractors are familiar with the current state laws addressing which paints are legal and which paints fall short of environmental and air quality requirements. First time fines for the use of an illegal paint can fall in the tens of thousands of dollars. There are many great products sold by national paint manufacturers that will last a long time. So take some extra time to make sure you are covered with paint products that meet state codes and requirements.

There are many important decisions to make when planning and managing large warehouse striping projects. Look for part two next week when we continue our report addressing the main questions to ask a striping contractor for warehouse striping and painting projects. Check back next week when we look at the next three issues. Timing, Experience, Guarantees.

Some people love to be organized, while others do not. Those who are in charge of a warehouse, however, have no choice but to be organized. If you’re disorganized when you’re running a warehouse, your entire stock and employees may get mixed up. This is why someone like Federal Express needs to have warehouse painting done, and they chose to contact Trueline Parking Lot Striping in order to have some of their striping taken care of.

Federal Express contracted Trueline Striping recently in order to have a small parking lot project taken care of. They made great decisions as to their warehouse striping, including choosing two part epoxy for their painting needs, which results in a longer life span, and organizing their area by using numeric stencils. If Federal Express realizes that they need to be as organized as possible and knows that warehouse striping can help them to get the many packages to the correct places on time, then most warehouse owners will also see that warehouse striping is not superfluous, but instead that it can help you to get your items organized and your employees working together in harmony.

Could warehouse floor striping possible be as important as parking lot striping? On one hand, you’ve got parking lot striping, which keeps vehicles from running into each other and into pedestrians, which helps those who are driving to know where to park their car and where to enter a store. On the other side, you’ve got warehouse floor striping which is often never seen by the customer. Could it possibly be as important as parking lot striping?

Absolutely. Warehouse floor striping may not be seen by your consumers, but it is seen by your employees and is of vital importance. It helps those who are working in your warehouse to know which way to go and where to place things. Without warehouse floor striping, warehouses become a huge concrete world of chaos. You may have equipment bumping into each other and people running into things. When you have the proper warehouse floor striping done, however, you can not only make sure that your place looks great.  In case you do have consumer visitors, you can make sure that your employees have an easier time maneuvering around your warehouse so that they do not bump into anything or get harmed.

There have been a number of people lately asking why warehouse floor striping is important. Case in point? This email:

“I’ve got a warehouse, but everything seems to run smoothly. My employees have never complained about having a problem, and I don’t think that warehouse floor striping is a necessity for my business.”

If your warehouse is flowing smoothly right now, congratulations! Chances are fairly high, however, that the only reason that its flowing so well is because you have had the same employees there for a number of years and they know how to work well together. Add a new employee into the mix, and it may take awhile for that employee to figure out how your warehouse flows. The easiest way to make it a gentle transition for any new employee is through getting warehouse floor striping done. Warehouse floor striping is very easy to do, and can be fairly inexpensive, and can keep things much more organized than you would ever believe. If you believe warehouse striping isn’t for you, step back for a moment and think about how an employee who just joined your team would feel.

Have you ever watched some of those television shows that demonstrate how things are made? There are a number of them, and almost all of them show the factory and how the machines are important to making things run. What they don’t show, however, is the warehouse. The items made have to be housed somewhere, and a warehouse is the ideal place to keep things. In the warehouse, though, it’s not machines that take care of business, its people, and they often need a bit more direction than machines do. Warehouse floor striping is an excellent way to make sure your employees are kept organized.

If you own a company that makes a dozen different items, you may have to store them in a dozen different places, and no matter how large the warehouse is, it can be tricky to remember where everything is. Warehouse floor striping allows you to be able to know where you’re going at all times, and directs employees so that they do not have to worry about colliding in the middle of the warehouse floor.

Some owners of warehouses believe that they can simply go into the warehouse, spray the lines that are needed, and get the result that they want. This is not so. Warehouse floor striping can be tricky, and there are a number of things that you need to watch out for before you begin to stripe.

To begin with, many warehouse companies use products that are designed to make their floor look nicer, like Floor Shine. If you stripe with this on the floor, your paint will come off almost before you put it on. When you’re doing warehouse floor striping, everything has to be totally clean before you can begin to lay down the stripes.

Also, it is important to get the right kinds of paint when you’re striping a warehouse floor. Warehouse floor striping has to undergo a lot of traffic, and painting with the wrong paint will mean that you have to repaint over and over again, making it necessary to spend a lot of time and money. The right paint, however, and you’ll be in the clear for quite awhile. These reasons and more are why it is important to have a professional come in and stripe your warehouse floor for you, to ensure that you get everything done properly the first time.

Q: Is there actually any good reasons to have warehouse floor striping put into my warehouse?

A: Absolutely! Warehouse floor striping is designed to help your staff to be more efficient and organized. It can help you if you’ve got machinery in the warehouse, as a solid line can be placed in the warehouse allowing the staff to know the path of the machinery, and it can help your staff to move around easily without bumping into each other or other objects.

Q: Can’t I just put in warehouse floor striping myself?

A: You could, but it wouldn’t last. People who try to save money by striping their floor themselves (usually by using spray paint), often find that their floor striping disappears fairly quickly, frustrating them and forcing them to spend even more money on striping their warehouse.

Q: Is warehouse floor striping expensive?

A: It doesn’t have to be. If you’ve chosen a company that has been doing striping for a very long time, they will be able to design the best possible scenario for you, therefore saving you money as well as frustration. You also have to remember that any work you get done by a professional will last, saving you money there as well.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune to walk into a warehouse where spray paint has been used to make impromptu warehouse floor striping, you know how unprofessional it looks. When you’re running a business that is constantly moving, spray paint can seem like a quick and inexpensive answer to your navigational solutions. In reality, however, spray paint not only looks bad, but also is difficult to see after a short amount of time.

Unlike professional warehouse floor striping, spray paint breaks down quickly. If you were to mark up your warehouse floor with spray paint in an area where it would be walked over on a daily basis, you would likely not be able to see the area you spray painted after a month or less. Professional warehouse floor striping, however, not only looks great, it lasts. It is estimated that you will only have to replace professional striping less than once a year, allowing you to not only save money, but to help your business to keep a professional tone at the same time.

In today’s digital world, many business owners do not have a flesh-and-blood store, but have an online store only. This can actually save business owners a great deal of money, as they can earn money without having to deal with the overhead costs that are associated with owning a store in the city. Having an online business, however, comes with its own difficulties, and one of these is that the business owner needs to have the room to store their belongings, which usually means that they need to buy, or rent, warehouse space.

Warehouse floor markings can save you a great deal of time and energy when you own an online business and need to have a warehouse as well. When you mark the floor correctly, you will be giving your employees an easy way to stay organized, making it simple to find things and to know where to put things away. You can create open pathways, and clear loading and unloading zones. You can even mark off a specific place for each type of delivery driver, making it easy for your drivers as well as for your staff and cutting down on mailing mishaps. Warehouse floor markings are definitely a must for those who need a warehouse.

One thing that many business owners do not take the time to think about is warehouse floor striping. When you own a business that has a warehouse, you may believe that the large space is enough to allow your employees to get around easily, without having to direct where they go. If you’ve got a busy warehouse, however, or if you have a warehouse that you let your customers into, you may want to get warehouse floor striping.

Warehouse floor striping is very simple to do, and can make your warehouse not only easier to maneuver around, but much more efficient as well. When you take the time to have warehouse floor striping done, your employees will know where to go, and any customers who have to come into the warehouse area will know how organized you have things, making both you and your company look great in their eyes. In order to have your warehouse floor striping done  right, you should hire a professional who has experience in dealing with striping in a warehouse and who knows how to get the paint to stick on any type of flooring.