Carton flow

Merchandise is stocked in the rear of the carton flow rack and moves toward the picking station in front on an inclined shelf equipped with specially designed roller track.

A limitation worth mentioning is that carton flows are not well suited for larger volume or full case applications.

In a static storage system such as standard shelving, stockers and pickers often do a lot of unnecessary travel.

Lansing Peter Shield, President of Grand Union Co., applied for patents for the original gravity-feed rear-load design using Unistrut and Nylon strips in 1945 (later approved in 1948).

Grand Union formed a company called Food-O-Mat to sell the carton flow system, and made Gardner Hinckley the president.