Roller Conveyors

What's in This Roller Conveyor Category

Every industrial roller conveyor on this page is a Vestil product, made in the USA and covered by Vestil's 1-year limited warranty. The eight lines cover unpowered handling end to end — straight gravity sections and the legs that support them, expandable conveyors that stretch to reach into a trailer, ball transfer platforms and strips for rotating and aligning loads, pop-up ball transfer platforms, gravity flow inserts that turn a rack lane into a flow lane, and steel machine rollers for skidding equipment across a floor. Prices in the collection start at $102.

Two further lines — Ball Transfer Strips & Single Ball Transfers and Ball Transfer Platforms — round out the transfer hardware; check the individual listings for sizes and pricing.

Gravity vs. Manual Roller Conveyor Systems: How to Choose

Both gravity and manual (push) roller conveyor systems use the same unpowered frame; the difference is what supplies the energy. On a gravity run, the frame is set at a decline and the load moves on its own. On a level run, an operator pushes. That single decision drives the rest of the specification.

The mistake buyers make most often is picking a decline off a chart instead of testing it. Required grade depends on load weight, the material of the load's base, and bearing drag in the rollers — a light empty tote and a full case of the same footprint will not run at the same slope. Set the first section, run your actual product across it, and fix the grade from there. Underslope stalls; overslope means loads arrive faster than a person can catch them.

Roller pitch matters as much as slope. Size sections so at least three rollers sit under the load at all times — with fewer, the package pitches nose-down between rollers and stops. That means roller centers should be closer than one-third the length of the shortest item you plan to run. Anything with a soft, uneven, or open bottom — bagged goods, banded bundles, drums — generally needs a slave board or a skid rather than direct contact with the rollers.

Width is the other constraint. The Gravity Roller Conveyor System here runs from 24"×120" to 36"×120", and legs such as CONVL-12-1723 adjust between 17" and 23" of height. Match the frame width to your widest load plus clearance, then confirm the leg range brings the bed to a comfortable working height for your operators or to the height of the equipment it feeds.

Ball Transfers, Pop-Up Transfer Conveyors, and Flow Inserts

Rollers only move a load one direction. Wherever product has to turn, merge, or be squared up against a scale or a wrapper, ball transfers do the work. A ball transfer platform lets an operator rotate a heavy carton or pallet by hand instead of muscling it around a corner. Ball transfer strips and single ball transfers do the same job at a single point — a table edge, the gap between two conveyor sections, a fabrication bench.

A pop-up transfer conveyor solves the diverting problem. The ball table sits below the roller line and lifts on demand, breaking the load off the rollers so it can be pushed sideways onto a spur. The POPUP-4048 measures 40" × 48", which matches the footprint of the 48" × 40" GMA pallet published by the Grocery Manufacturers Association; POPUP-1932 at 19" × 32" suits carton-level transfers. Buy the platform to the load footprint, not the aisle.

Gravity flow inserts are a different tool for a different place. RFLOW-12-42 drops into an existing rack lane and converts static shelf storage into first-in, first-out picking without rebuilding the rack. It is the cheapest item on this page that changes how a pick face actually works.

Machine Rollers and Transition Rollers for Point Loads

Steel machine rollers are not conveyor at all — they are skates you place under a machine to walk it across a floor. Capacities in this catalog run from 2,000 lb on the VHMS-2 up to 22,000 lb on the VHMS-15, with the VHMS-8 rated at 8,250 lb between them. Rate the set, not the individual roller, and remember that a machine's weight is rarely centered: the roller carrying the heaviest corner is the one that has to hold. Floor condition governs everything here. Steel wheels concentrate load on a small contact patch, so verify your slab and any expansion joints before rolling heavy equipment over them.

Buyers searching for transition rollers are usually looking for hardware to bridge two conveyor sections or move a load from a conveyor onto a bench. In this catalog that role is filled by the ball transfer strips and single ball transfers rather than by a part named "transition roller" — the balls let the load pivot across the gap in any direction instead of only along one axis.

Safety, Site Requirements, and Maintenance

ASME B20.1, the Safety Standard for Conveyors and Related Equipment, is the governing consensus standard for this equipment and addresses guarding, pinch points, crossovers, and the design of transfer locations. Gravity conveyor introduces hazards that powered lines do not: an unrestrained load on a decline keeps accelerating, so end stops and, on longer runs, brakes or escapements belong in the layout from the start.

Placement is a compliance issue as much as a design one. OSHA 1910.176(a) requires that aisles and passageways be kept clear and in good repair, which rules out running a conveyor line across a walkway without a crossover or gate. OSHA 1910.22 requires walking-working surfaces to be kept free of hazards — relevant when conveyor legs, frames, and pop-up platforms intrude into floor space. Where flow inserts feed a rack, OSHA 1910.176(b) requires that stored material be stacked and secured against sliding or collapse.

OSHA's lockout/tagout rule, 1910.147, applies to servicing powered equipment; unpowered gravity conveyor generally falls outside it, but any pop-up or lift function with stored energy still needs to be blocked or supported before anyone reaches under it. Maintenance on unpowered roller conveyor is light — check for seized or flat-spotted rollers, keep bearings clean of shrink wrap and strapping debris, verify frame joints and leg fasteners stay tight, and re-check grade after any section is moved.

Roller Conveyor Price: What Drives It

Cost in this category tracks three things: length, load rating, and whether the frame moves. Legs and inserts sit at the bottom — CONVL-12-1723 at $124.29, RFLOW-12-42 at $108.60. A fixed section is mid-range, like the $1,017.85 CONV-52-5-2-3L-Z. The top of the range is the expandable rollaway conveyor: EXCNV-S-24-24 at $4,021.75 with a skate bed and EXCNV-R-24-24 at $4,054.29 rated at 200 lb/ft with a roller bed.

That gap is worth thinking through before you buy on price. A fixed run is cheaper per foot but occupies its dock position permanently. An expandable conveyor collapses out of the way between trailers and extends into the box, which is what you are paying for. Cost the layout — sections, legs, transfer points, and end stops together — rather than comparing single-section prices across configurations that do different jobs.