Start with the thing most stillage guides written by suppliers will not tell you: we do not sell stillages. KC Supply stocks 350 products across storage, handling and access, and not one of them is a stillage. So this guide has nothing to sell you at the end of it — which means it can be straight with you about what a stillage is, when you genuinely need one, and the three or four situations where people buy a stillage and a different piece of equipment would have served them better.
If you already know you need stillages, the section on where they actually come from is the useful part. If you are still deciding, read on.
What is a stillage?
A stillage is a rigid, self-supporting container for handling and storing goods as a unit load. The defining features are that it stands on its own legs or base, it can be lifted by forklift, and it is designed to be stacked with other loaded stillages on top of it. That last point is what separates a stillage from most other containers: the structure carries the weight of the units above it, not just its own contents.
The word is used loosely. In some trades it means a specific steel post-and-base frame; in others it covers anything from a mesh cage pallet to a timber frame a joiner knocked together for a specific job. Wikipedia's entry is broad for exactly this reason, and if a supplier and a customer each use the word confidently without checking, they will sometimes be talking about different objects.
The main types of stillage
Cage and mesh stillages
A steel base with mesh sides, usually with a half-drop or full-drop front so the contents can be reached without unstacking. Contents are visible, which makes stock-checking quick, and ventilated, which matters for anything damp or warm. The trade-off is that a mesh side offers no protection from weather and only modest protection from theft — you can see in, and so can everyone else.
Post stillages
A flat deck with four removable or folding corner posts. The posts carry the stacking load, so the goods themselves are not compressed by whatever is stacked above. When the posts come out, the empty decks stack flat, which is the whole point: post stillages exist to solve the return-leg problem. If your stillages travel out full and come back empty, the folding or demountable post design is usually what makes the economics work.
Box and solid-sided stillages
Solid steel or plywood sides, sometimes with a lid. Right for small or loose components that would fall through mesh, for anything that needs protecting from dust and light, and for higher-security loads. Heavier, more expensive, and you cannot see what is in them without opening them.
Cage pallets
Strictly a pallet with a demountable cage on top rather than an integrated stillage, but the terms are used interchangeably in most yards. Useful where the same base needs to work both as a plain pallet and as a contained unit.
Stillage, pallet, storage cage or roll container — what is the actual difference?
This is the question that costs people money, because the four are not interchangeable and the words are used sloppily.
| What it is | Stacks loaded? | Moved by | Typical job | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pallet | A flat base, no sides | Only if the load itself will take it | Forklift, pallet truck | Boxed or shrink-wrapped goods that are stable on their own |
| Stillage | Rigid container with a structural frame | Yes — that is the point | Forklift | Loose, awkward or heavy components moving between sites or processes |
| Storage cage | A secure enclosure that stays put | Generally no | Forklift or castors, but usually installed | Securing valuable or hazardous stock in one location |
| Roll container | A wheeled cage pushed by hand | No | One person, by hand | Picking and distributing within a building or to a vehicle |
The single most useful test is this: does the container need to carry the weight of another loaded container on top of it? If yes, you need a stillage and nothing else will do. If no, you almost certainly want a storage cage, a roll container or a plain pallet, all of which are cheaper, easier to source, or both.
The second test is who moves it. A stillage always needs a forklift. If the answer to "how will this get from A to B" is "somebody will push it", a roll container or a distribution trolley is the right product and a stillage will simply sit where it was put.
How to choose a stillage
1. Match the format to the load
Loose metal components, offcuts and castings: mesh. Small parts that would fall through: box or solid-sided. Anything that comes back empty in volume: post stillages, every time. Anything that must be inspected without unstacking: mesh or a drop-front.
2. Get the rating in writing — both of them
A stillage has two separate load figures and people routinely confuse them. The unit load is what one stillage can hold. The stacking load is what the frame will carry from the stillages above it, and it is usually expressed as a number of units high when loaded. A stillage rated for a 1,000 kg unit load is not necessarily rated to be stacked four high with 1,000 kg in each.
Ask for both figures, in writing, before you order. If a supplier will only quote one, assume the other has not been established.
3. Size it around your handling, not around your goods
The temptation is to size the stillage to the load. Size it instead to the three things it has to fit: your forklift's fork spread and reach, your racking beam pitch if it is going into racking, and your vehicle bed if it travels. A stillage that fits the goods perfectly but is 50 mm too deep for the trailer is scrap. Our guide to UK pallet sizes and how they interact with racking covers the dimensional arithmetic, and it applies to stillages just as directly.
4. Stackable, nestable or knock-down
Three different answers to the return-leg problem, and they cost different amounts. Stackable units stack loaded but take the same floor space empty. Nestable units telescope into each other empty, typically reclaiming 60–75% of the volume. Knock-down units dismantle to flat components — the biggest saving on the return leg, and the most labour at each end. If your stillages spend more time empty than full, the extra cost of nestable or knock-down pays back quickly; if they never leave the building, it is money spent on a problem you do not have.
5. Security, environment and finish
Galvanised for outdoor or damp; powder coat for indoor and for colour-coding by process or customer. Add a lid or solid sides if the contents are worth stealing. And check whether the padlock, the fixings and the shelves are included — across the industrial storage market they very often are not, and that is where a cheap quote stops being cheap.
Moving and stacking stillages safely
Three rules that cover most of what goes wrong:
- Never stack higher than the manufacturer's stated figure, and never assume that figure applies when the lower units are only part-loaded — an unevenly loaded stillage stacks differently from a full one.
- Inspect the feet and the corner posts. These take the stacking load, and a bent foot or a splayed post is the failure that brings a stack down. Damaged units should be taken out of service, not put at the bottom "because it will be under everything anyway".
- Do not lift a stillage by its top rail with a crane or hoist unless it has designed lifting points. Fork pockets are for forks. If cranage is part of your process, buy a unit with certified lifting eyes and use a spreader.
If stillages are going into racking, the same inspection duties apply to the racking itself — see racking inspection under SEMA and HSG76.
Where stillages actually come from
The UK stillage market is largely served by specialist manufacturers and by a substantial second-hand trade — ex-automotive and ex-engineering units come back into circulation constantly, and for a lot of applications a refurbished post stillage at a fraction of new cost is the sensible buy. We are not in that market and cannot quote you for it. Search for stillage manufacturers and used-stillage dealers directly; a new mesh stillage is a commodity item and the price reflects that.
What we can tell you is where the stillage question turns out to have been the wrong question.
When a storage cage is what you actually needed
A large share of stillage enquiries are really enclosure problems, not unit-load problems. If the goods are not going to be stacked on top of each other and are not leaving the building, what you want is a storage cage. We stock 24 of them, and the specifications are published rather than assumed. Our storage cages buying guide goes through the full range; what follows is just the part that bears on the stillage decision.
Secure, certified, and rated
The Grenadier® Galvanised Security Cages are all-welded steel angle with 25 × 25 mm weld mesh, load tested and CE certified, max load 500 kg, with a padlock facility (padlock not supplied) and cranage eyes for lifting — with the manufacturer's recommendation to use a spreader when you do. That is a specification a stillage-market mesh cage usually cannot match, because the certification is what you are paying for.
The size ladder is worth understanding before you order, because width does not price linearly:
| Model | Size W × D × H (mm) | Price | Cost of the extra width |
|---|---|---|---|
| SCS03Z | 700 × 700 × 1680 | £1,824.66 | — |
| SCS04Z | 1400 × 700 × 1680 | £2,783.76 | +£959.10 (+52.6%) for 700 mm |
| SCS05Z | 2070 × 700 × 1680 | £3,363.18 | +£579.42 (+20.8%) for 670 mm |
The first 700 mm of extra width costs £1.37 per millimetre; the next 670 mm costs £0.87 — 37% less. In plain terms: if you are choosing between the 1400 mm and the 2070 mm cage, the wide one is much better value than the step you have already decided to take. If you are choosing between 700 mm and 1400 mm, that is the expensive jump and it is worth checking whether two 700 mm cages in different places suit you better than one wide one.
Castors are cheap here, which is not true everywhere. Matched at 1400 × 700, the static cage (SCS02Z) is £1,734.42 and the mobile version (SCS02S) is £1,837.98 — £103.56, or 6.0%, for four 100 mm nylon castors, two braked. The only cost besides the money is 115 mm of added overall height, which matters if the cage is going under anything. By comparison, mobility on our bar storage racks costs 24.3% and two tiers — so "should it be on wheels" has a different answer depending on which product you are asking about.
Knock-down, if the return leg is your problem
The Grenadier® Strong Knock Down Cages dismantle for storage and transport, have a padlock facility, a red powder-coat finish, and holes in the base rails so they can be bolted down (fixings not supplied). Two sizes, both 1625 mm high × 1600 mm wide:
- 825 mm deep (SCK14Z) — £1,515.84
- 1650 mm deep (SCK15Z) — £2,034.48
Doubling the depth costs £518.64, or 34.2%. You get twice the floor area for a third more money, so unless the footprint is genuinely constrained, the deep one is the better buy by a wide margin. A forklift will be needed to unload either.
Sealed and stackable-adjacent
The Grenadier® Security Cage With Lift Up Lid is fully welded with a gas-strut-assisted lid and one properly clever detail: when the lid is shut, the front doors will not open, so the unit is secure in one movement rather than two. It incorporates two forklift pockets. £2,108.28 at 1260 mm wide (GBC12Z), £2,671.44 at 1860 mm (GBC18Z) — +£563.16, or 26.7%, for 600 mm.
Compartmented, for kit rather than bulk
The Wire Mesh Storage Compartments are fully welded tubular steel with a 50 × 50 mm mesh carcass and 25 × 25 mm mesh shelves, a hanging rail and two shelves per compartment, and both floor and wall fixing points (fixings not supplied). Single-sided wall-mounted is £1,583.64 (WML01Z); the double-sided unit is £3,031.14 (WML02Z), 1.91× the single-sided.
Doors are the expensive option and they get more expensive as the unit gets bigger: adding doors costs £563.94 (+35.6%) on the single-sided unit and £1,512.42 (+49.9%) on the double-sided one. On the double-sided unit, doors cost half as much again as the cage. Worth it where contents are valuable; hard to justify where visibility was the reason you chose mesh in the first place.
When it was a skip, a trolley or a rack all along
- If the contents get tipped out — swarf, offcuts, waste, scrap — a stillage is the wrong tool and a tilting skip is the right one. Ours start at £1,345.68 and tip under control rather than needing to be upended by forklift.
- If somebody pushes it round the building, you want a distribution cage or trolley, not a stillage. Ours run on two fixed and two swivel castors with adjustable shelves, from £1,288.14.
- If the load is long — bar, tube, sheet, section — no stillage will hold it properly and you want vertical storage racks or bar racks. See also cantilever racking for long loads at scale.
- If it is palletised and going into racking, it is a pallet-and-racking problem — start with warehouse racking types explained.
The honest summary
Buy a stillage when the load must stack loaded, travel by forklift, and survive being handled as a unit — and buy it from a stillage manufacturer or the second-hand market, because that is a commodity product bought on price. Buy a storage cage, a skip, a trolley or a rack when what you actually need is to secure, tip, move or support the goods rather than stack them. Those four we can help with, and every specification and price on this page comes from the product data rather than from a brochure.
Not sure which side of the line you are on? Tell us what the goods are, how they move and whether anything goes on top — we will tell you which it is, including when the answer is a stillage and therefore not us.