We bought this shelf to clean up and organize the garage. I never planned to challenge the 8,000 lb load limit, and after putting this together I certainly wouldn't. It's fairly sturdy but I just don't see it holding that sort of weight. I had trouble getting the top and bottom portions to stay together, but once I got the shelf completely level it wasn't a problem. Just add bins and you've got a great storage solution!

It's not the most sturdy set of shelving. For about twenty bucks more you can get a much more sturdy Edsal shelving set with brackets to hold the two vertical posts together. In this product being reviewed, the two vertical pieces aren't held together by anything other than the cross rails/braces.

This is totally a get-what-you-pay-for item. On sale it's less than $60, which is far less than what other units cost. However, it's difficult to put together where the vertical side bars on the top half connect to the vertical side bars on the bottom half, and the quality is not great. The particle board shelves always arrive with chunks missing on the corners, and the shelves start to bow very quickly even without a lot of weight.

This arrived in a box that was dented and banged up - when I opened it a couple of the shelf corners were chipped & broken (but not badly enough to make it worth trying to return, since the whole thing was SO heavy!). And the kicker -- NO assembly instructions! Once I finally figured it out by trial and error, it has been a good unit.

I was expecting these to have one long rail for each corner. Each corner is actually two separate pieces and they are supposed to be held together by one of the shelf sections. It is not secure and extremely difficult to assemble. After buying 4 for under $50 on cyber Monday I am disappointed. The boxes arrived by Fedex with damaged boxes and left out in the rain rather than under a covered porch. I realize these were cheap, but with a regular price of $110 I expected more. I didn't even finish assembling one and left the other three in the boxes. I will be returning them today and going back to building my own shelves. I figured I would try these since they were cheaper than the materials to build shelves, but they are not the same. I can build a 18"x96" unit with 5 shelves for around $60 and an hour or so of my time. They aren't pretty and painted, but they get the job done and will hold a lot more weight. I guess one cool thing about these is you could use them at half height as work benches or something.

Good shelving but the photo is incorrect. I have several shelves from this mfg. and some have connectors for the columns and some need to have a shelve at the joint to keep it connected. The photos show connectors but none come with it. The enclosed instructions do not list connectors in the parts list. A shelf MUST be place at the 3'-0" location to hold it together. The photos are of a different model.

Harder to assemble than I thought. The bracket corners did not always settle easily into the slots making assembly more of a balancing act. The shelves are heavier than they appear so placing them on the top shelves by myself was challenging. Would recommend a sturdy connector piece to fit between the top and bottom vertical poles on all four sides. This appears to be the weakest part of the design. The metal poles are just resting on top of each other and, in my opinion, are not secure.

Considering you would pay $40-$60 for a toy rack, these are a great buy, especially as they are on sale right now if you get the bundle(2). They are bigger than I had imagined, even though I saw the measurements. Very sturdy when built. If the shelves were metal it would be perfect. They are "particle board", others have called it something else. Basically they are made of stuff that, if gotten damp/wet, would warp and eventually crumble. I plan to varnish or seal them to hold off that possibility.

It's OK, but if I had more time to search on line I would have bought something different. Assembles without tools is true, but you still need a hammer to seat the bars rivets in place and a third hand to hold the top vertical bars in place. I've never been a big fan of particle board used on a horizontal surface. They will sag with time and weight. It dries out, loses its strength with any moisture.

These shelves are great, needed something for our major garage cleanup and these shelves were not only a great price but fit perfect along the back wall not to mention they hold up to 4,000 lbs. Thanks Wal-Mart for always having exactly what we need.