If your business is large enough, you'll need to store extra product somewhere other than on your vending truck. However, if you just use a truck, storing product follows similar principles.
Your storage area should be organized in a fashion that you find easy to use. I recommend that you organize by type and then make dedicated places for everything that you order consistently. Let's use our 10,000 square foot warehouse as an example:
Our snacks are stored on the shelves surrounding the warehouses by type. There are sections for chips, crackers, soups, cookies, etc.
We have a refrigerator for candy and freezers for all the cold food.
Our beverages that have a lower sales volume go on shelves and our beverages with higher volume sales go on pallets underneath the snack shelves or in the middle of the warehouse. This is so they can be easily moved around when new deliveries arrive.
Proper stacking methods
When stacking beverages, you want them to be as easy as possible to retrieve when loading your truck. 12 oz soda cans specifically benefit from being stacked in an alternating brick pattern, which is shown below.
This offers the most stability, which is a boon when a pallet is stacked ten layers high. This is much more preferable to stacking cases on top of the other in the same orientation, which will guarantee structural instability at a certain height. Water and other 20 oz beverages benefit from a similar stacking method, however since the case size and volume is larger, there are less cases per layer (6 as opposed to 8).
This stacking principle applies everywhere. If you're transporting the soda in a pickup truck, stack it this way to minimize the amount it moves when driving.
Check dates
In general, you should always check the expiration dates on your product as it comes into the warehouse. Do not automatically assume that if you bought this product later than the last product, that it will expire later. Make sure to rotate your product in your warehouse, in your truck, and in your machines.
Be especially mindful of expiration dates on beverages in the winter time, because the bottler will more likely deliver short-dated product since the demand for that product is low.
Increasing storage space
If you find yourself running out of space, store product on a high shelf above arms reach. To store product, you can use a ladder. To get product down either use the same ladder or bend a wire coat hanger so that it is completely straight save for a hook on the end.
You can then store chips, soups, crackers, cookies, and other relatively light cases of product on that high shelf and use the hooked wire to pull them down. If you do this, use a gentle pulling motion so you can safely bring the product off the shelf.
To increase beverage storage space, you can place pallets of beverages on top of each other using a forklift.
