Roll Containers

Roll cages, roll containers, cage trolleys and roll pallets are, for the most part, four names for the same thing: a wheeled steel cage that lets you load stock once and move it from vehicle to warehouse to shop floor without handling it again. Which name a buyer uses tends to say more about their trade than about the equipment. Retail and supermarket distribution say roll cage; logistics and third-party warehousing say roll container or roll pallet; healthcare, laundry and catering usually say cage trolley. We have used all four on this page deliberately, because the specification questions underneath them are identical.

What we stock is one range: the GPC Heavy Duty Roll Containers, UK-manufactured in powder-coated steel, in two footprints and eleven configurations. They are built for repeated distribution work rather than for stacking flat in a return trailer — a trade-off we explain honestly below, because it is the single decision that should determine whether this range suits you at all.

The eleven configurations, and what each one costs you

Rather than a wall of near-identical listings, the range is one heavy-duty platform built in two sizes, each available with a varying number of mesh sides and with or without two removable shelves.

Model Configuration Size (mm)
TRC1102 2 ends & 1 side 1100 × 700 × 1500
TRC1103 2 ends & 2 sides 1100 × 700 × 1500
TRC1104 2 ends & 2 shelves 1100 × 700 × 1500
TRC1105 2 ends, 1 side & 2 shelves 1100 × 700 × 1500
TRC1106 2 ends, 2 sides & 2 shelves 1100 × 700 × 1500
TRC1107 2 ends only 1730 × 725 × 1800
TRC1108 2 ends & 1 side 1730 × 725 × 1800
TRC1109 2 ends & 2 sides 1730 × 725 × 1800
TRC1110 2 ends & 2 shelves 1730 × 725 × 1800
TRC1111 2 ends, 1 side & 2 shelves 1730 × 725 × 1800
TRC1112 2 ends, 2 sides & 2 shelves 1730 × 725 × 1800

One point of accuracy worth making before you specify, because it is easy to assume otherwise: the 1100 mm unit is not available as an ends-only cage. The smaller footprint starts at two ends and one side (TRC1102). Only the 1730 mm unit is offered with two ends and nothing else (TRC1107). If you want a genuinely open two-sided cage for bulky, self-stable loads, it is the long one or nothing.

The other thing the price ladder tells you — and almost no supplier sets it out this way — is roughly what each option is worth to you. Across the range, adding a mesh side costs on the order of £150 on the 1100 mm unit and £200 on the 1730 mm unit; adding the pair of removable shelves costs on the order of £275 and £370 respectively. Prices on this page are current and per unit, so check the live figure before you order, but the ratio is stable and it is the useful part. Shelves are the expensive option, and they are the one people most often buy without needing.

Two footprints: read the table down the column, not across the row

Compare the two sizes properly and the design intent becomes obvious. The depth barely changes — 700 mm on the small unit, 725 mm on the large — while the length goes from 1100 mm to 1730 mm, a little over half as long again, and the height from 1500 mm to 1800 mm.

In other words the range does not grow into a bigger square. It grows longer and taller in the same aisle width. That matters in three practical ways:

  • Aisle and doorway clearance is set by the depth, and the depth is effectively fixed. If a 1100 mm container gets through your building, so will a 1730 mm one — but the turning circle will not be the same, and a long cage that fits down an aisle can still fail to turn out of it. Measure the pinch point where the container has to change direction, not the straight run.
  • Vehicle height decides the 1800 mm question more often than the load does. A 1500 mm container is loaded and checked comfortably by most operators; at 1800 mm the top of the cage is above eye level for a good proportion of staff, which affects both loading practice and whether anyone can see over it while pushing. Check the internal height of your van, tail-lift or trailer first — a container that will not stand up in the vehicle is not a container you can use.
  • The long unit takes a UK standard pallet's worth of stock in a footprint that still moves on castors. If you are trying to decide between moving stock caged and moving it palletised, our guide to UK pallet sizes sets out the dimensions that decide it.

Castor layout: two fixed and two swivel, and why that is not a detail

Every unit in the range runs on two fixed and two swivel 100 mm castors. This is worth a section of its own, because it is the specification that most changes how a roll cage behaves in use and it is almost never explained on a product page.

A cage on four swivel castors can be pushed sideways, slid into a gap and spun on the spot. It is excellent in a tight, flat picking area. It is also, on any ramp, dock plate or sloping yard, a cage that wants to travel in a direction of its own choosing — because nothing on it holds a line.

A cage on two fixed and two swivel castors tracks straight and steers from one end, like a trolley. You lose the ability to shunt it sideways in a confined space; you gain a container that goes where it is pointed on a slope and does not slew when it is loaded unevenly. For distribution work — vehicle, tail-lift, dock, aisle — that is the right trade almost every time, and it is why the range is built this way rather than as a general-purpose four-swivel cage.

The corollary is a genuine limitation, and we would rather you knew it now: if your application is dense, static picking in a tight area where cages are constantly repositioned sideways, a four-swivel platform truck or picking trolley is a better tool than a roll container. Our guide to picking trolleys for warehouse order picking and the wider trucks & trolleys range cover that job properly.

The 100 mm castor size carries its own implication. Small-diameter wheels are efficient and stable on a good floor and unforgiving on a poor one: broken expansion joints, unsealed yard surfaces and the lip of a badly seated dock plate all take far more effort to cross than they would on a larger wheel. If your route includes a rough section, deal with the floor or the ramp rather than the cage — see container access ramps for the loading-edge end of that problem.

Sides and shelves: choosing the configuration

Two ends only (TRC1107) is the fastest cage to load and unload, because both long faces are open. It suits stock that holds its own shape — boxed white goods, banded bundles, drums in a frame, anything that will not lean out of the cage while it moves. It is the wrong choice for loose or mixed stock, and it is the wrong choice for anything travelling on a public road.

One side is the compromise most distribution operations settle on: the closed face goes against the vehicle wall or the aisle side, the open face is the working face, and the cage still loads quickly.

Two sides — a four-sided cage, counting the ends — is the standard retail and multi-drop specification. It contains mixed stock properly, it can be strapped or netted across the open ends, and it is the configuration people mean when they search for a 4-sided roll cage.

Two removable shelves split the cube into three tiers. This is a genuinely useful option for smaller cartons, picked orders and anything that would otherwise be stacked five deep and crushed at the bottom — but it is the most expensive option in the range, and the shelves take up cube in exchange for organising it. Buy shelves when the stock is small and light and would otherwise crush; do not buy them because they look tidy in a photograph. They lift out again, so a shelved container can revert to full-cube working when you need it to.

If crushing is your actual problem, it is worth reading how load is carried in stacked cartons before you specify — our guide to stacking and storing loads safely explains why column stacking and interlocking behave so differently.

Nestable, demountable or fixed? Be honest about which you need

This is the decision that should come first, and the one the search results make hardest to see, because the three types are sold side by side under the same names.

  • Nestable roll cages have a hinged or shaped base so empty units push into each other, typically recovering three-quarters or more of the floor space on a return leg. That is the format most supermarket and retail distribution networks run.
  • Demountable roll cages come apart into base and panels for flat return transport and for storing empties in a small area.
  • Fixed-format, flat-packed containers — what we stock — are assembled once and stay assembled. They neither nest nor demount.

We do not currently stock nestable or demountable roll cages. If the economics of your operation are driven by getting empties back cheaply — a closed-loop retail network, a multi-drop round that returns full of empty cages, a contract where return transport is charged by the metre — nestable is the right product and we would rather point you at it than sell you the wrong thing.

What a fixed container buys you instead is rigidity. Every mechanism that lets a cage fold, nest or demount is a mechanism that wears, racks out of square and eventually stops locking; a fixed-format, bolted, powder-coated container has none of them. Where cages live on one site, work daily, take tail-lift shocks and dock impacts, and are never shipped back empty, the fixed format simply lasts longer. That is the trade: you give up return-transport efficiency and you get a container that is still square in five years.

What "heavy duty" actually means here

"Heavy duty roll container" is used loosely across the market, so here is what it means on this range specifically, from the manufacturer's own data rather than from marketing copy:

  • High-quality steel, powder-coated blue. Powder coat is the right finish for indoor and sheltered distribution use; if your cages will live permanently outside, read our comparison of galvanised versus powder-coated steel before you order, because that is a specification decision rather than a colour one.
  • Load capacity 75 kg per shelf. Read that as written — it is a per-shelf figure on the shelved models. It is not a whole-unit capacity, and two shelves do not add up into one. Distribute the load across the shelf rather than concentrating it at one end.
  • Fixed-format construction — the container is assembled once from flat pack and stays assembled; it neither nests nor demounts. The published specification does not state a joining method, so if a welded rather than bolted frame is a tender requirement, ask us to confirm it in writing.
  • UK manufactured by GPC Industries, which in practice means replacement panels and shelves can be sourced years after purchase rather than the range disappearing at the end of an import run.

Delivery and assembly — the two things people are caught out by

Both are in the manufacturer's data and both are worth planning for:

  1. Units are supplied flat-packed for assembly on site. That keeps transport cost sensible and means a delivery will not arrive as a lorry-load of air. Allow assembly time and floor space to do it.
  2. A forklift is needed to unload. This is the one that causes trouble. Have a forklift and a driver available on the delivery day, or arrange an alternative before the vehicle is booked — a flat-packed pallet of steel container panels is not something to improvise around on the yard.

If moving several loaded containers over any distance is part of the routine, an electric tug is the honest answer rather than more staff — a laden roll container is well within one person's ability to start moving and considerably harder to stop.

When a roll container is the wrong answer

Four cases where something else in the range fits better:

For the full picture on how roll cages and roll containers differ from the other wheeled formats, and on handling them safely once loaded, see our roll cages and roll containers warehouse guide. For static bulk storage of the same stock, racking and shelving and heavy duty shelving are the alternatives worth pricing alongside.

Not sure which configuration fits your vehicle, aisle or stock? Tell us the vehicle internal height, the narrowest turn on the route and what the cage will actually carry, and we will tell you which of the eleven models to order — or tell you that a different product suits you better.

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