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For quite a while now I've wanted to change up the layout in my garage. It seems like there's never enough workspace or storage. A big part of that is the fact that I need to finish projects and get rid of old car parts. But I still want to have more flexibility and better utilization of the space. The stuff I have now is a haphazard mess of bandaid fixes to previous problems.



I'd seen where people used pallet racks to make work spaces, and it finally clicked when I saw what Mike at StanceWorks was doing. This is the best screenshot I could find right now.



It just so happened around this time that my favorite local auction site had some pallet racks show up. I put in a bid, dealt with some stupidity from another bidder, paid a little more than I wanted, but ultimately ended up with something I was happy with.



Here's where it gets fun. The business being liquidated was in the massive cave complex about 15 minutes west of me. Here's a PDF explaining the place if you're curious.

https://listingsprod.blob.core.windows. ... 26cb23c02c

I'd been there a few times before, but it's always fun to go again.





The National Archive have a huge chunk of the space down here due to the stable climate. A lot of stuff related to the Kennedy assassination, for example.





Broke it all down by myself and got it loaded up.





Inspector Steven approves.



I took the day off work to get started on this. Rearranging the existing crap in the garage was a big part of it. Then I had to trim a couple inches off the uprights because they were 8 feet, and the back of my garage is only 7' 11".

So far it's turning out how I want it to. I hope to have the 3rd upright in place over the weekend. The short term goal is to have storage over the workbench and the tall cabinets. Longer term is to get rid of all of that and replace it with a shorter cabinet and a more traditional wide toolbox. I'll use the pallet rack to have work surfaces above those. I'll add some lighting and re-mount the TV behind the bench similar to the StanceWorks setup.

Nice

Yea those racks/shelving are awesome. We use them at work for a ton of stuff.

I need to something like this in my garage at some point too

I got mine from a liquidation auction, but there are businesses that sell this stuff second hand. There's even a sticker on mine that says "Pallet Rack Cheap" and has a local phone number on it. I'm sure there's plenty of places like that in your area too.

It cuts really easy with a sawsall. So even if you find something that's too tall, you can lop it down to size easily. Mine had been cut down at least a couple times before. That's why it has the green feet on the bottom. You can't really see in my pics, but the triangulation bracing on mine is bolted in rather than welded. So it can be re-positioned if you change the height.

It's not super heavy either. The uprights were 45-50 lbs based on specs I found online. It was a little awkward, but I was able to handle it all by myself.

That's a great idea for creating levels of storage. I've been toying with it myself after i had converted my computer room with the Costco racks.

That's perfect for that space.

Home Depot has some pallet rack (ish) shelving, but it's nowhere near as big as the warehouse stuff.

https://www.homedepot.com/s/pallet%20rack?NCNI-5

It's expensive too. I paid $330 for mine after buyers premium and taxes, and that was on the high end of what I've seen it go for. There was an auction before mine that had a setup similar to mine but with 6 shelves and it went for ~$150. It was really scraped up though. I don't know why there was such a big fight for the ones I got. There was a 6 shelf set in the same auction as mine and it went for nearly $500.

Yea, i works good for that area. Liked it so much we did the opposite wall for our food pantry.



Your racks are nicer and are more capable for an outdoor/garage scenario. Funny you got caught in a bid war though.

The best part was the last guy thinking this was eBay and he could snipe me at 10 seconds. It just added 5 minutes to the timer, and my bid was higher than his anyway.

That's awesome I need to figure out something to get a work bench

Jeff V. wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2026 3:17 pm I got mine from a liquidation auction, but there are businesses that sell this stuff second hand. There's even a sticker on mine that says "Pallet Rack Cheap" and has a local phone number on it. I'm sure there's plenty of places like that in your area too.

Equip-Bid? We've bought a lot of stuff from there when we were remodeling our cabins. I check them daily-ish for a few specific items.

Jeff V. wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2026 4:15 pm The best part was the last guy thinking this was eBay and he could snipe me at 10 seconds. It just added 5 minutes to the timer, and my bid was higher than his anyway.

more auction sites need to do this. it sucks that all it serves to do is drive the price up but i hate snipers with a passion

Yep. Equip-Bid. I skim over all the bulk Amazon return crap and most of the estate sales. But the business liquidations and the occasional IT resellers can have some real gems.

love those shelving units. Have two big ones in my storage one and one in the garage. mine are husky but i think theyre all made by the same company, esdel or something like that from what i remember

Got the other side done on Saturday.



I moved the truck dash over by the workbench.



There's still a ton of smaller work to do to make the most of the new space, but the heavy labor is done and I'm really happy with the progress and the new options. Maybe that'll help me be motivated to finish up some of the outstanding projects.



BTW, if you don't have a laser tape measure, you should get one. It's a breeze to measure things like floor to ceiling clearance, or distances where it's difficult to run a tape measure.

No really. All that space to better utilize now.

I also plan to knock out the wall just to the right of the last picture. It hides the HVAC duct that runs into the garage ceiling, and the exhaust for the water heater. It's mostly empty space that could be put to better use. I'm sure I can find a way to hide the ducting that isn't such a waste of space.

The ducting might be nice to look at if it was done well.

Given the rest of this house, that's unlikely.

I need to redo all of mine. When my dad’s house is built his tool box and mill/lathe will leave and I will have a big area to decide what to do.


Coop

Took some time to put up a wall board up between the studs and mount some stuff to it. Got my Ryobi battery maintainer back up, and then I added a mount for a 34" monitor I had laying around. I still need to tidy up the cabling once I have a few other minor things sorted out.



I got some nice neodymium magnet hooks to hang small things from the pallet racks. Those are good and cheap and seem pretty solid. I also found the right size J hook that I can bolt to the holes in the side of the rack, so I can hang heavier things like extension cords. It's working out really great so far.

The next big thing is going to be tidying up the workbench and getting some of these small projects done and gone. That will hopefully start moving a bit quicker now that I'm happy with the work space again.