Can Autonomous Forklifts Run a Wisconsin Cheese Plant's Cold Storage?

Can Autonomous Forklifts Run Cold Storage at a Wisconsin Cheese Plant Without a Driver?

For a Wisconsin cheese plant, the realistic first step is a pilot, not a driverless building. Autonomous forklifts handle repetitive pallet moves along fixed routes, and cold storage can have exactly that pattern: pallets go into racks, come back out and travel to the same dock doors. Whether your aisles fit that pattern, and whether your battery plan and exception handling can keep up, decides the answer.

Your numbers give the starting point. You have 120 workers across three shifts and about 400 pallets moved per shift. Those figures do not show how many moves repeat, how far each pallet travels on the freezer side, or how many drivers are on a forklift at any moment. A site assessment measures those things before anyone quotes a plan.

A pilot on one cold storage aisle and one shift will teach you more than a plan drawn on paper. Once it works, the limit becomes exceptions: blocked aisles, pallets outside standard spacing and loads a person must inspect. Those cases do not vanish on a robot shift, so a driver or lead still needs to be reachable on every shift.

How Big Is Wisconsin's Cheese Output and Is Its Labor Market Tight?

Wisconsin's cheese output is large, and its specialty lines are still growing. According to USDA NASS Wisconsin data reported by Cheese Reporter in June 2026, specialty cheese reached a record 1.03 billion pounds in 2025, up 1.1 percent from 2024. Specialty cheese made up 28.2 percent of the state's 3.64 billion pounds of total cheese output that year.

Plant counts are less settled. USDA NASS reported that 116 Wisconsin cheese plants made at least one specialty cheese in 2024, and other reports tally plants another way. No official 2025 total has been published that we could confirm, so ask the NASS Wisconsin Field Office or the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) for the current count before you plan around one. For your plant, the statewide count matters less than your own pallet flow.

The labor side is tight but not empty. The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development reported a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 3.3 percent in June 2026, against 4.2 percent nationally. Labor force participation was 64.5 percent in Wisconsin versus 61.5 percent nationally, so the pool exists, yet a low jobless rate means each open driver shift is harder to fill.

Manufacturing is shrinking in the state. A WPR report citing BLS data says Wisconsin's manufacturing workforce fell by about 9,500 jobs between January 2025 and January 2026. The report partly attributes that drop to an aging workforce and hiring hesitancy, which matters for a plant that depends on experienced people on the floor.

How Many Forklift Drivers Does Cold Storage Really Need Per Shift?

No published figure gives drivers per pallet for a cheese plant, and you should be wary of any vendor who offers one without seeing your floor. Drivers per shift depend on travel distance, pallets per trip and how many moves are staged by hand. Your shift log, with time stamps for each move from dock to rack and back, is the number that matters. Count the drivers on the cold side per shift and the moves each one completes.

National labor data gives a sense of scale. BLS reports that material movers and hand laborers held about 6.9 million jobs in May 2025, with projected 4 percent growth from 2025 to 2035. BLS files forklift operators under material moving machine operators, not hand laborers, so use that category when you compare against labor data.

The operator pool is also a safety question. OSHA's directive on powered industrial trucks reports that about 1.5 million U.S. workers operate over 855,900 of those trucks. Every change in who sits on a truck changes training and supervision work, and the cold side is no exception.

Are Autonomous Forklifts Safe Around People in Cold Storage Aisles?

OSHA's Region I directive on powered industrial trucks reports that 42 percent of forklift fatalities involve the operator being crushed by a tipping vehicle. Taking the operator out of the seat removes the most direct exposure in that pattern. It does not take people out of the aisle, though. Inspectors, stock pickers, cleaners and maintenance crews still share the space, and the machine has to stop and yield for them.

Treat the autonomous forklift as equipment that still needs a formal risk assessment. Map where people walk in the cold storage aisles, mark the crossings to the dock and decide which zones are robot only during each shift. Write the rule for who may enter the machine's path before it goes live, and train every shift on that rule, including the people who arrive at the start of a shift.

Ask for stop behavior and safety certifications in writing, and review them with your insurer and your safety team. We handle integration and deployment, but your safety people approve the zones, the procedures and the training records.

How Common Are Autonomous Forklifts and Mobile Robots in Plants Like Yours?

Adoption is growing, but most facilities are still early. A January 2025 automation study of 217 professionals, summarized by Material Handling 24/7, found that 41 percent use shuttle systems or mobile robotic storage and retrieval systems, and 59 percent plan to upgrade or implement them within two years. Those are survey intentions, not verified rollouts.

A 2025 MHI survey, reported secondhand, put robotics adoption at 48 percent. That measure covers robotics broadly, so it does not tell you how many cold storage plants run autonomous forklifts specifically.

Vendor-sponsored research paints a sparser picture. A study by an automation vendor, reported by SDCExec, found that 70 percent of companies had never deployed an autonomous mobile robot and 76 percent had never deployed an automated guided vehicle. GlobeST, writing in March 2026, placed AMRs and AGVs in roughly 10 to 15 percent of facilities.

What this means for you: the technology has enough proven deployments to be a fair test, yet most plants have not tried it. Ask any integrator for references at a food or cold chain site, not only at distribution centers.

Can Cold Storage Batteries and Charging Handle Freezer Aisles?

The battery is where many cold storage pilots run into trouble. Refrigerated & Frozen Food guidance recommends selecting a lithium-ion battery with an on-board low-draw heater for cold storage. A battery maker's comparison, which is vendor material and not independent testing, says lead-acid batteries show significant capacity loss in freezing conditions, while lithium is described as stable to about minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Charging is the second trap. One battery maker recommends a transition area of 15 to 30 degrees Celsius before charging. A Modern Materials Handling article warns that lithium batteries without built-in cold-charging protection can be more hazardous in a freezer than lead-acid. Condensation also forms when a unit moves between a freezer and a warm dock, so plan a transition step at the dock.

Charging also has to fit your shifts. On three shifts, the windows for charging shrink, so size the battery and charging plan from your own run data rather than a vendor average. Ask for the charge cycle and warm-up procedure in writing, and test them during a cold week, not only in a demo.

What Does a Phased Pilot Look Like Across Three Shifts?

Start with one aisle on one shift, preferably the coldest and busiest one, because the pilot should test the hardest conditions first. Keep drivers on the other aisles and shifts as they are. Measure pallets moved, exceptions raised and stops for people, then decide whether to add the next aisle.

Add shifts in steps, using a phased deployment that keeps the plant running while the machine learns the layout. Give each step a stop rule. If exceptions rise above the level your team agreed on, pause and fix the route or procedure before you push ahead.

Our role covers the whole lifecycle. We assess the site with mapping and measurements, quote a fixed robot lease payment through financing after that assessment, deploy and integrate the unit, train your team and service it under our service plan with regional service engineers. You keep one partner and one number, and we pick the robot that fits your floor, whichever manufacturer that turns out to be.

What Should You Check Before Approving a Cold Storage Pilot?

Use this list before you approve a pilot. Each item is a point where a yes can turn into a no, and each one is easier to settle during the site assessment than after the lease is signed.

If two or more of these come back as unknowns, delay the pilot until they are answered. An unknown in the battery plan or the exception coverage is usually the one that causes the first lost shift.

How Should Staffing Change Once Autonomous Forklifts Run?

Plan the staffing change before the first pilot shift. Name the drivers who will train on the machine, the lead who owns exception calls on each shift and the person who watches charging. A plant that has trained its people to supervise the machine is in a stronger position than one that treats the robot as a headcount cut.

Expect the forklift role to change rather than vanish overnight. Some drivers may move to dock supervision, quality checks or pallet staging, while others stay on the cold side for non-routine work. The split depends on the pilot results, so decide it after the first aisle has run.

Published turnover figures for forklift drivers are scarce, so your own records are the best benchmark. Track driver turnover, open shifts and overtime on the cold side before and after the pilot. Those three measures will show whether the robot is easing the gap you are trying to close.