When you run a farm shop outside Waterloo and you are finally ready to buy one of the automotive two post lifts you have been eyeing for the last five winters, the machine itself is only half the decision. The other half is getting a 1,900-pound crate off the freight truck and onto your concrete without wrecking either. At Auto Lift Services in Ames, Iowa, we ship these lifts across the Midwest every week, and we have watched more than one rural install go sideways at the freight step. Here is the pre-purchase checklist we walk customers through before we book a truck.
Rotary, Challenger, BendPak, and Atlas two-post lifts we stock and install across Iowa.
Know What “Freight” Actually Means Before You Order
Freight for a two-post lift is not the same as UPS ground. Most automotive two post lifts weigh between 1,700 and 2,200 pounds crated, and they ship on an LTL semi. The driver’s job ends at the tail of the truck, not at your barn door. If you do not have a way to get the crate off that tailgate, you will be paying a lumper fee, rescheduling delivery, or watching the driver refuse the drop entirely. On our shipping page we tell every customer to answer three questions before we book freight: do you have a forklift with at least 3,000 lb capacity, do you have a hard-surface driveway a 53-foot trailer can back into, and is there someone at the shop during a four-hour delivery window? Rural addresses around Waterloo, Grundy Center, and Independence sometimes need a lift-gate truck upgrade because tractor-trailers cannot turn around in a gravel farmyard. Say so at quote time and we build it in. We would rather over-spec the delivery than watch you eat a redelivery fee.
Forklift Capacity, Fork Length, and Why It Matters
A shop forklift rated 3,000 pounds is usually enough for the crate, but only if the forks are long enough. The columns of automotive two post lifts sit at odd angles inside the crate, and short 36-inch forks can bite the wrong spot and split the crate frame while you lift. We recommend 42-inch or longer forks and fork extensions if you have them. Slide under the crate from the long side, not the end, and lift slow. Farmers in the Waterloo area often have a skid steer with pallet forks, which works too, but keep it low to the ground because skid steers want to tip forward when you extend the load. If you do not have a lift truck at all, we can arrange a lift-gate delivery, but lift-gates are rated 2,500 pounds and cost more because a two-post crate is right at the ragged edge of what they will safely lower. Once we know your equipment situation, we pick the right freight class. It is usually the single biggest source of surprise cost on rural installs, and we would rather quote it honestly the first time.
Concrete: The Specification No One Reads Until It Is Too Late
Every set of automotive two post lifts we sell requires a minimum concrete slab. For a 10,000-pound lift that is typically 4 inches of 3,000 PSI concrete; for 12,000 to 15,000 pound units it jumps to 4.75 or 6 inches at 3,500 to 4,000 PSI. Rural shops built in the 1980s and 1990s were often poured with whatever the ready-mix truck had that day, and there is no test report on the wall to confirm the specs. Before you order, we ask you to core-drill a one-inch plug in the corner and measure the actual thickness. If it is thin, you have three options: pour a new pad, drop down to a lighter lift, or add a saw-cut and pour a two-column footing. On a Waterloo-area farm shop last spring, the owner assumed his 30-year-old slab was four inches; when we drilled the anchor holes it was three, and there was rebar in the wrong place. We ended up cutting and pouring two 3×3 footings under the columns. Better to find that out on paper than on install day. Our concrete requirements guide has the full spec table.
Ceiling Height and Overhead Bar Clearance
Farm shops around Waterloo tend to have generous ceilings, 12 to 14 feet is common, but the trusses and lights hang lower than you would think. Standard automotive two post lifts have an overhead crossbar sitting between 12 and 12.5 feet in the air, and a taller extended-height version pushes that to 14 feet or more. Measure from the floor to the LOWEST obstruction: the bottom chord of the truss, the light fixture, an overhead door track, a hanging tube heater. Do not measure to the ridge. If you have an overhead door on the same wall, verify that the door in the up position does not clip a column. We install a lot of lifts in Butler and Bremer county pole barns, and the two situations we see repeatedly are a hanging tube heater right where the crossbar wants to sit, and a door track that lands two inches short of the column top. Both are cheap to fix if you catch them before we ship. Both are painful to fix after the crate is on your floor.
Automotive Two Post Lifts for Wheel Bearing Service
Why do rural farm shops keep buying automotive two post lifts specifically? Wheel bearings, mostly. A drive-on 4-post is great for oil changes but useless for pulling a front hub, because the wheels are loaded. On a two-post, the vehicle hangs by the frame and the wheels rotate free. That matters when you are servicing wheel bearings on a Silverado, a Ford F-350, a 90s farm pickup, or the shop truck that has been leaking grease from the front hub for two months. Set the arms under the frame rails, raise the vehicle, spin the wheel, feel the roughness, pull the caliper, pull the rotor, press the bearing. The whole job takes 45 minutes if you can see and reach the hub, which you cannot do on jack stands. Ten thousand pounds handles anything under an F-350; jump to 12,000 lb if you are routinely working on 3/4 or 1-ton diesels with plows or fuel tanks. If you are servicing tandem farm trucks over 14,000 lbs, you need a heavy-duty two-post or a mobile column set, which is a different animal entirely.
Unloading Day: What the Two of You Are Going to Do
When freight day comes, block off three hours. You will need two people minimum. One person spots the truck; the other clears the concrete pad and stages the forklift. Cut the banding first, THEN break the crate apart, not the other way around, because the columns are heavy and lean weird when the banding cuts them loose from the pallet. Stand the first column with a floor jack and a nylon strap; you are not trying to be a hero. On a Waterloo install last November, a father and son used their skid steer with a chain wrapped through the top hole to walk the column upright. It works, but the safer play is a chain fall from a truss above. Once the columns are standing, cross-connect with the hydraulic power unit, the equalizer cables, and the overhead bar or baseplate. We ship printed instructions with every unit and we are on the phone Monday through Friday if you get stuck at any step. It is an all-day job for a first-timer and a half-day job the second time. Do not rush the anchor torque.
When to Just Have Us Install It
Not every farm shop wants to fight with an install. If you are 90 minutes from Ames, meaning Waterloo, Cedar Falls, Iowa Falls, Marshalltown, or Ackley, we roll a two-person crew, a proper hammer drill, a torque wrench, and the whole cable and pulley kit in a service truck. Turnkey install runs a set fee that includes anchor drilling, cable tension, and a shakedown lift with a customer vehicle. For farm shops with existing concrete of unknown vintage, we bring a hardness tester so you are not guessing. The math on install-yourself versus installed usually comes down to whether you have a spare Saturday and a friend with an engineering brain. If you do not, paying us is often cheaper than the tools you would buy and the time you would lose. Either way, we quote both options up front so you can pick. If a Rotary is on your short list, our Rotary SPO10 buyer’s guide lists model-specific install notes. Call us at 800-674-9302 with your zip code, slab thickness (if you know it), and ceiling height, and we will price the whole thing in one conversation.
Our Clients Include: