What Is a Conveyor System?
A conveyor system is the circulatory system of a warehouse or plant: a network of powered and gravity equipment that moves cartons, totes, and pallets between receiving, storage, picking, packing, and shipping without a person carrying them. Done right, conveyors remove the walking, lifting, and waiting that eat most of a facility's labor hours.
Conveyors range from a single gravity lane behind a pack bench to miles of automated sortation moving hundreds of thousands of units a day. The right answer depends on your product profile, throughput, and building, which is why the design conversation matters more than the catalog.
The Main Types of Conveyor
Belt conveyor
A continuous belt over a slider bed or rollers. The workhorse for cartons, polybags, and irregular items, and for incline and decline runs.
Gravity roller and skatewheel
Unpowered lanes that flow product by gravity. The cheapest foot of conveyor you can buy, ideal for docks, pack-out, and truck loading.
Powered roller (MDR)
Motor-driven rollers with 24V zones. Quiet, energy-efficient, and the standard for modern carton transport.
Accumulation conveyor
Zero-pressure zones that queue product without cartons touching, absorbing surges ahead of pack stations and sorters.
Sortation systems
Sliding-shoe, cross-belt, tilt-tray, and pusher sorters that divert product to doors, lanes, or chutes at high speed.
Spiral and vertical conveyors
Move product between mezzanine levels and floors in a compact footprint instead of long inclines.
Pallet conveyor
Chain and roller systems that move full pallets through stretch wrappers, AS/RS interfaces, and shipping lanes.
Flexible and extendable
Telescoping and flexible units that reach into trailers for fluid loading and unloading.
How MTLI Works With Conveyor System
Design & Engineering
It starts with your data, not a catalog: throughput, product profile, building, and budget. Our engineers design the right answer, with stamped drawings and permits where structures are involved.
Supply & Procurement
We source across 500+ manufacturer partners worldwide, brand-agnostic, new and used where it makes sense, with volume pricing passed through to you.
Installation & Commissioning
Our own crews install, integrate, and commission, phased around live operations when needed, with an MTLI supervisor on site every day and 98% on-time delivery.
Support & Lifecycle
After handover we stay: preventative maintenance programs, inspections, controls support, and 24/7 options, designed around your uptime targets.
Where MTLI Can Help You
- New fulfillment and distribution center buildouts
- Adding sortation to an operation outgrowing manual pack-out
- Connecting pick modules and mezzanines to shipping
- Replacing or extending an existing conveyor loop in a live facility
- Relocating conveyor from a closing site into a new one
- Preventative maintenance and retrofit of aging systems
From under $100K to $100M+ turnkey. A specialist calls within one business day.
Common Questions, Answered
How much does a conveyor system cost?
Anywhere from under $100K for a dock or pack-out package to multimillion-dollar sortation networks. Because MTLI sources across 500+ manufacturer partners worldwide, the design fits your budget rather than one vendor's catalog, and volume pricing passes through to you.
Can conveyor be installed while my facility keeps running?
Yes. Most of our conveyor work happens in live buildings: phased sections, off-shift crews, and clean handovers each morning so receiving and shipping never stop.
Do you integrate conveyor with our WMS?
Yes. Our controls team delivers the electrical, PLC controls, and WCS/WES software layer, and the system can API with most WMS and ERP platforms as required.
Do you service conveyors you did not install?
Yes. We inspect, maintain, and retrofit conveyor systems from any manufacturer, and we design full preventative maintenance programs around them.