A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods and warehouse steel buildings are very common since steel is an ideal building material for attaching loading docks that makes it possible to load and unload trucks, railway wagons, ships and other forms of transport vehicles. Warehouse steel buildings have traditionally been erected by import & export companies, major manufacturers, wholesalers and companies specializing in transport and logistics. It is also common for customs to have warehouse steel buildings for storing new arrivals until they have been checked.
During recent years, a lot of companies have created warehouse-style retail stores. This type of retail store is built on the traditional warehouse steel building concept and can therefore offer lower prices to the customers. Warehouse-style retail stores normally have much higher ceilings than traditional shops and decorative shelves and other forms of “extras” are uncommon. The shop is instead arranged just like a traditional warehouse with heavy duty industrial racks. The offered items are usually stacked on pallets, with the ready for sale items located at the bottom part of the racks. One of the advantages of this type of commercial steel structure is that it can be used as a warehouse and retail store simultaneously.
Warehouse steel buildings are usually large, plain buildings and they tend to be located in industrial parts of cities and town, close to a port or adjacent to well-cared for roads that make transportation safe, easy and efficient. The same is true for the warehouse-style stores, but they have begun to migrate into traditionally retail areas during recent years as shoppers have developed a greater tolerance for cheap, no-nonsense stores.
During the last few decades of the 1900s, the traditional warehouse had been on the decline due to the new Just In Time (JIT) concept, where items were “stored on the road” or in transit, rather than in warehouses. As we enter the 21st century, the warehouse steel building is however making a comeback. The vast distances between many manufacturer, assemblers and retailers require at least one warehouse per region for their supply chains. The warehouse steel building shows no sign of disappearing any time soon.
One of the reasons why warehouse steel buildings are so popular is the fact that steel use in construction is a fire proof material. Steel can prevent nearby fires from spreading to the warehouse, and a properly designed warehouse steel building can also lock a fire into a separate part of the warehouse in case a fire would break out inside the building.
In addition, steel is also flexible and affordable. Due to its strength, it is possible to create column-free designs without decreasing safety and sturdiness. Steel is a great choice in humid climates because the mold, mildew and other types of malicious fungi that can infest other types of buildings is not found nearly as often in steel structures. Steel is also avoided by wood destroying insects such as carpenter bees, carpenter ants, termites and power post beetles.
