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THE WORLD’S ONLY FREESTANDING OVERHEAD STORAGE SYSTEM
No Drilling • No Truss Damage • Unlike Ceiling Racks
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How Much Weight Can an Overhead Rack Hold — and is it safe?


 

An overhead garage rack may be rated for hundreds of pounds, but your garage ceiling is the real limit. Most residential garage trusses are designed for a dead load of about 10 pounds per square foot — far less than what storage racks advertise. A “700-lb capacity” rack may look impressive, but that rating ignores the structure it’s bolted to. The real question isn’t how much the rack can hold — it’s how much your trusses can safely handle. 

The storage industry wants you to believe that drilling into your home is safe.

 

Here’s the truth:
Trusses are built to support drywall, light insulation, and electrical — not hundreds of pounds of storage plus the weight of a person in the attic..


If ceiling rack installers ever brought this up,
fewer racks would be sold.


STOP ASKING

"How Much Can the Rack Hold?"

 

START ASKING

"How Much Can My Trusses Hold?" 


Answer: Far Less Than You Think — and Not Safely.

 

An entire industry has kept silent about the hidden danger of ceiling-mounted racks.


The Garage Ceilings Are the Weakest Link

Most residential trusses are built from relatively small-dimension lumber (often 2x4s), optimized for efficiency — not storage loads. Many are already compromised before you ever move in.

Builders often sub out framing work, and crews:

  • lift trusses wrong,

  • store them wrong,

  • skip proper bracing,

  • leave them exposed to moisture.

When this happens, gusset plates bend, joints crack, and the wood loses strength long before you ever hang a single box.

The damage is usually hidden — until you overload the attic or hang a ceiling rack loaded with bins.

The Real Problem: POINT LOADS

A point load means putting a lot of weight on one small spot instead of spreading it out.

When you bolt a ceiling rack into a truss, all that weight is concentrated on just a few screws in one narrow piece of wood. You’re not “adding storage” — you’re forcing your ceiling to carry weight it was never designed to handle in one place.

Your roof is built from truss triangles. Triangles are strong, but if the bottom chord is pulled too hard, the whole truss can deform, crack, or even fail.

Every ceiling rack adds concentrated stress exactly where the roof is weakest — the bottom chord of the truss.

You’re overloading the weakest part of your roof.

Hidden Risk Homeowners Never Think About

The danger isn’t the rack breaking. It’s your ceiling giving way slowly over time — sagging, cracking, pulling apart at the gusset plates.

That’s why the real question isn’t:

❌ “How much weight can the rack hold?”

It’s:

✅ “How much weight can my ceiling safely handle?” Far less than you think — and not safely.

STAY SAFE — FREESTANDING OVERHEAD STORAGE

 

The safest alternative doesn’t attach to your ceiling at all

Meet ARackAbove — the only overhead storage that stands on its own four feet.
No drilling. No damage. No guessing. Just a rock-solid, engineered frame that holds 2,000lbs of the weight from the ground up — exactly where strength belongs.

See If ARackAbove will fit your garage @ www.arackabove.com