Repair IT, an IT support provider serving Wrexham and North Wales, fixed a total Wi-Fi dead zone at Marlin Industries’ Llay Industrial Estate warehouse (a timber drum recycling site) by mounting rugged, weatherproof routers directly onto six forklifts instead of installing fixed access points. A previous enterprise-grade wireless installation had failed because steel racking scattered signal and rain-soaked timber absorbed 2.4GHz frequencies. The forklift-mounted routers moved with the work, were wired into each vehicle’s 12V ignition power, and ran custom DD-WRT firmware to fix roaming and channel-interference issues between units. Result: real-time RFID stock tracking was restored across the site at a fraction of the cost of a full network overhaul.
At Repair IT!, we spend most of our week on the things people expect from us, business IT support around Wrexham, sorting out slow office PCs, and getting tangled networking sorted for local firms. But every so often a job comes in that has nothing to do with a product catalogue and everything to do with physics. This is one of those jobs.s
The Client: A Warehouse That Ate Wi-Fi Signals
Our client, Marlin Industries, runs the UK’s leading timber drum repair and recycling operation. Picture 3 to 5 acres of site: a warehouse packed floor to ceiling with dense blue steel racking, and an outdoor yard stacked with timber drums soaking in North Wales rain.
That combination turned out to be close to the worst case scenario for wireless signal:
- Steel racking indoors bounced and scattered standard Wi-Fi into a mess of interference.
- Rain soaked timber outdoors absorbed 2.4GHz signal almost completely. Water and that frequency don’t mix.
- Dry, stacked plywood created solid wooden walls several metres thick that no wall mounted access point could get through.
Every incoming drum had to be scanned with a handheld RFID gun and logged in real time. Repairable, scrap for the on site biomass plant, or upcycled into furniture. But the moment a yard worker walked down a racking aisle, the scanner lost signal, the data dropped, and the whole tracking system ground to a halt.
Why the First Attempt Failed
Before we got involved, another provider had installed a full corporate grade wireless network. Smart looking access points, remote management, the lot. On paper it should have worked. In the warehouse, the metal racking and waterlogged timber killed the signal just as badly as before, and the system had to be ripped out.
It’s a fair reminder that a great spec sheet doesn’t help if it wasn’t designed for your actual building.
Our Fix: We Put the Network on the Forklifts
The idea came out of a conversation with the site’s electrician, who asked a simple question: could we mount our rugged outdoor Wi-Fi boxes directly onto the vehicles?
Instead of trying to blanket a 5 acre yard with fixed access points, we made the forklifts themselves into moving Wi-Fi nodes. As they drove to wherever the work was, they carried a strong signal with them, so a worker was always a few metres from a solid connection, whether they were on the warehouse floor or deep in the outdoor racks.
How we built it:
- Weatherproof, industrial rated enclosures mounted to each forklift’s roll cage
- Wired directly into the forklift’s 12V power, so the network switched on with the ignition
- A rugged Ethernet port fitted under the driver’s seat, giving us a simple way to plug in and reconfigure a unit without pulling it apart
We then flashed every unit with DD-WRT, open source router firmware, to fix a memory issue in the stock software that couldn’t cope with scanners roaming between vehicles. That let us set up proper client bridge networking, matched Wi-Fi channels across the six forklifts to avoid interference, and got the handheld scanners connecting instantly wherever they were.
The Result
- No more dead zones, indoors or out
- Real time stock tracking restored across the whole site
- A fraction of the cost of another full enterprise network overhaul
Where things stand today: Marlin Industries’ tracking system has moved on since, and the Llay site now runs on newer off the shelf industrial Wi-Fi kit that’s finally caught up with what the environment needs. But this mesh network proved it could be done at all, at a time when nothing on the market would have worked.
Special thanks to Peter, Marlin Industries’ site electrician, whose idea started the whole thing, and whose cabling work was genuinely a pleasure to see.
Quick Answers
What causes Wi-Fi dead zones in warehouses?
Metal racking scatters and reflects Wi-Fi signal, while damp or water heavy materials like stored timber absorb 2.4GHz frequencies almost completely. Thick, densely packed materials also block signal outright. Most warehouses have some combination of all three.
Can you put Wi-Fi routers on moving vehicles?
Yes. With the right weatherproof enclosure, a stable 12V power connection, and firmware built to handle devices roaming between signal sources, vehicle mounted routers can act as mobile network nodes that follow the work around a site.
Is this the same as a normal warehouse Wi-Fi installation?
No. A standard installation uses fixed access points mounted to walls or ceilings. This approach works when a site’s layout makes fixed access points ineffective, for example where the day to day layout changes, or where materials in the space would block or absorb a fixed signal.
Got a site that’s chewed up every Wi-Fi solution you’ve thrown at it? Let’s talk. We’re dedicated to solving your tech problems with expert care, even the ones that shouldn’t be solvable yet.
