A distribution centre floor is a superflat industrial slab designed around materials handling equipment, with joints and armouring that are part of the design rather than a detail. Protecting it during works – usually a fit-out, a mezzanine install or a racking change – means protecting the joints and the surface from a very specific set of loads.
Joints are the asset
Saw-cut and armoured joints in a superflat floor are what keep it working. A joint damaged by a forklift wheel or filled with debris leads to spalling along the joint line, which is expensive and difficult to put right. Protection over a joint has to spread wheel loads across it, which means a stiff board spanning the joint rather than a flexible sheet bridging it.
Forklift loads
A counterbalance forklift puts a large load through two small front wheels, and it does that while steering. Nothing soft survives it. A stiff, dense-skinned board spreads it enough to protect the surface; anything less gets cut and the debris then damages the floor. Where the works area is in the MHE route, that is the specification; elsewhere it is unnecessary.
Trip edges and safety
A warehouse has a safety culture around floor conditions and a raised board edge is exactly the kind of thing that gets reported. Tight joints, tapered edges and a daily check are not optional in a live distribution centre – and they matter more here than the protection performance of the board itself.
Phasing around operations
Distribution centres rarely stop. Works are phased by aisle or by zone while the rest keeps running, which means the protection moves with the works and gets re-laid repeatedly. That is an argument for a reusable board and for a stock size that a small crew can move quickly.
Buying
Large areas and tight budgets push towards the cheapest product, which is usually wrong: the areas that matter are the joints and the MHE routes, and those are a small share of the floor. Protect those properly and leave the rest, rather than covering everything thinly.
Mezzanine installs and the floor below
A mezzanine install is the most common reason a warehouse floor needs protecting: steel is heavy, it gets set down on the slab, and it is often dragged into position. Load-spreading boards along the set-down line, and a rule that nothing is dragged directly on the slab, prevents most of it. That is a site rule rather than a purchase, and it is the one worth enforcing.
Pallet trucks are the enemy
A distribution centre floor is usually a polished or sealed concrete slab, and the traffic is not footfall – it is pallet trucks and forklifts with hard wheels. A hand pallet truck carries a large share of its load on two small wheels, and that contact pressure is what cracks and spalls a slab edge and what chews through thin protection.
Panels for this environment need to resist rolling load rather than impact, which means the facing has to be bonded to the core across the whole area, not just at the edges – otherwise the facing creeps and bunches in front of the wheels. They also need to resist being pushed: loose panels on a smooth slab slide under a turning truck, and a sliding panel takes the floor with it. The felt face down on sealed concrete gives enough friction to stay put under foot traffic but not under truck traffic, so expect to fix the traffic routes and leave the pedestrian areas loose. The handling question is in moving materials over protected floors without damage.
What we can do
We supply stiff PP honeycomb board for joint and wheel-load protection in warehouses, in sizes that suit aisle working. Tell us the slab specification, the MHE types and whether the building stays live, and we will size the order to the routes. Joint behaviour is covered in protecting floors across expansion and movement joints.