Shop Organization – Part 2: Mounting Shelves on the Versatile Factory-Style Cart

The original factory cart I built has served me well for many years, primarily carrying lumber, toolboxes, machines, and various supplies. However, as space has become even more constrained in my two-car garage shop, I realized I needed to maximize vertical storage. My solution was to integrate a full-scale steel shelving rack directly onto the mobile cart platform.

Choosing the Rack

You can find these modular steel racks in almost every home improvement store, online, and often used in garage sales. They come in different types: some use compressed fiberboard or chipboard shelves, while others use metal. I have quite a bit of experience with these systems, and for this project, I chose one made entirely of steel, where the shelves are supported by long beams that span between the upright columns.

This investment—about $119, including shipping—was worthwhile, but it required a slight modification to my original wooden cart to accommodate the shelving unit’s footprint.

Modifying the Cart Deck

The steel rack’s base was slightly larger than my existing plywood cart top. To increase the surface and ensure the rack had a solid, stable foundation, I made an extension.

I cut and glued a U-shaped addition made from 2 x 4 lumber onto one of the short edges of the cart’s plywood deck. I made sure to create generous roundovers on all the new edges and corners to ensure no sharp points were left exposed as I move around the tight shop. You can achieve this using a router, a hand plane, or even just heavy-grit sandpaper.

Anchoring the Rack

Once the surface was sized correctly, I needed a way to ensure the steel rack’s four legs would not shift or slide as I moved the cart.

For this, I repurposed four L-shaped steel corner brackets that I had salvaged from the shipping packaging of a metal cabinet. These corners were strategically placed to box in the rack’s legs, making them ideal for ensuring the rack stays firmly anchored to the cart surface during movement.

If you don’t have ready-made corners like I did, you can easily create these yourself. You can cut them from scrap 3/4” plywood or hardwood and secure them to the deck—anything that acts as a physical stop for the legs will work.

In the pictures below, you can see how the new shelf rack fits perfectly over the modified cart. I was also careful to check the overhead clearance to ensure the entire system can still travel in and out of the garage door opening if I ever need to shuffle things around.

The quality of the casters provides ample support, allowing the fully loaded rack and cart to travel smoothly on the garage floor with no problem at all. This system of shelves upon carts is incredibly practical for small spaces and shops that accumulate a lot of machines and supplies, as it allows you to safely move things around to negotiate tight space constraints.