When a tenant asks what storage actually costs in this building, answer in the meeting, not a week later. Square footage and clear height in, pallet positions, racking cap ex, T/I per square foot, and days to operational out.
Three panels. Fill the first from the flyer, the second from what the tenant tells you in the room, and leave the third alone unless you are holding a firmer number. Everything below recalculates as you type.
These are AMH planning defaults for selective pallet rack, supplied and installed, kept current by our sales desk. Edit them if you are holding a firmer number for this deal.
Selective rack bays on an efficiency-adjusted footprint, beam levels from clear height and pallet height, AMH planning cost per position. Every plate updates as the inputs change.
This building supports about 55,200 pallet positions. Racking runs about $6.0M cap ex, or $2.41 per square foot per year over a 60 month lease, and the space is operational in roughly 148 days.
Updates live as you change the inputs above. The printed summary includes every input and output on one page.
Send this scenario to our team exactly as configured above. We pressure-test the assumptions against the actual building and come back with a number your tenant can act on.
Not an automated queue. Someone who has racked buildings this size.
We add the freight and transportation figure this calculator leaves out.
Clear scope and pricing, no obligation, on your deal's timeline.
Tenants do not budget in pallet positions. They budget in dollars per square foot per year, because that is how every other line of the lease is quoted. Racking is usually the largest single tenant improvement in a distribution deal, and when its capital cost is spread across the lease term it lands on the same mental line as base rent, CAM, and utilities. That is what turns an abstract warehouse rack cost per square foot into a racking tenant improvement cost the tenant can compare across buildings. At this tool's defaults, a 500,000 square foot building on a 60 month lease carries about $2.41 per square foot per year of racking T/I on top of a $6.00 occupancy number. Produce that figure in the first meeting and you control the conversation.
The same math explains why clear height and lease term move the number more than steel price does. A taller building stacks more beam levels on the same slab, which spreads both the racking cap ex and the monthly operating cost across more positions. A longer term spreads the same cap ex across more months. Two buildings quoted at identical rents can store very different amounts per dollar, and the tenant comparing them on rent alone can easily pick the one that stores less. Operating cost per pallet position per month is the tie-breaker, and it is a number most flyers never show.
It depends on rack type, height, seismic zone, and whether the steel is new or used. This calculator uses AMH's current planning default of $95 per pallet position for selective rack, supplied and installed, adjusted up or down for the tenant's first priority. Treat it as a budget number for the deal conversation, then ask AMH for a firm quote on the actual building.
Divide the racking cap ex by the lease term, then by the square footage, and annualize it. At this tool's defaults, a 500,000 square foot building on a 60 month lease carries about $2.41 per square foot per year of racking T/I. Clear height, aisle width, and lease length move that number more than list price does, which is why the same rack package prices differently in different buildings.
Lead time plus installation. AMH's current new-rack lead time default is 8 weeks, and install pace scales with the position count. At this tool's defaults, a 500,000 square foot building runs roughly 148 days from order to operational. A tenant that ranks speed first compresses the install phase by about 30 percent, at a premium on cost per position.