It has been well documented that warehousing facilities are in short supply and the acute lack of quality stock allied to the seemingly insatiable appetite of online consumers, is only likely to push demand for new units and rental prices for existing sites ever higher.

It is hardly surprising then, that in a recent survey commissioned by property consultants, Savills, twothirds of warehouse or distribution centre occupiers questioned said they needed more space.

However, with the amount of speculative building falling – thanks, in part, to planning policies that restrict the construction of new storage facilities – the supply of newbuild warehouse space has remained static in most regions.

With no let-up in the scarcity of good quality warehousing space in sight, occupiers are turning to technology that allows them to make maximum use of their existing property assets.

But, while a great deal of thought and planning often goes into the internal design and layout of a store as companies strive to optimise their pallet capacity, the efficient use of outside space is frequently overlooked by logistics planners.

Now though, this is changing as more and more own-account warehouse operators and third party logistics and fulfilment specialists switch on to the importance of optimising every square metre of a site’s external capacity.

With its unique telescopic reach, JCB’s Teletruk has been designed to enable users to leverage their outside storage space.

The Teletruk has the ability to access curtainsided trailers from only one side. This functionality means the amount of floorspace required to load and unload pallets to and from incoming or outgoing vehicles can be slashed by 30% – which, typically, will free up some 32 square metres of yard space per vehicle.

Using Teletruk technology to pick or pack pallets from one side only means that a curtainsider requires just six metres of space within which to be loaded or unloaded. So, trailers can be parked tight to a wall or other form of perimeter boundary –leaving valuable space free in the central yard area for additional storage, extra delivery vehicles or, indeed, tasks such as cross docking.

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