PURPOSE: To surely detect lengths of cargoes stored or not on a number of shelves in an automatic warehouse so that various types of cargoes can be stored on common shelves.

CONSTITUTION: Various types of cargoes of different depths are stored on shelves 12a-12n, 22a-22n. A slide fork 18 which is provided on an elevator 15 to store cargoes on the shelves has forward and backward moving strokes set up for the shelves to move at full strokes corresponding to greatest-depth cargoes and at shorter half strokes. As a result, cargoes are stored on the shelves with the ends positioned close to the face side (stacker crane 19 side) of the shelves.