Automotive Two Post Lifts: Financing & Pre-Purchase Checklist

A farm-shop customer near West Des Moines called us in early spring asking how to finance a set of automotive two post lifts for his outbuilding — one bay for the family fleet, one for the neighbors he works on trucks for. He’s the kind of buyer we see a lot: knows exactly what he wants for exhaust and driveline access, has the shop already built, but wants to spread the payment out and walk through a pre-purchase checklist before he signs anything. At Auto Lift Services we run 0% APR financing options and walk buyers through the whole checklist. Here’s how the conversation went and the checklist we used to get him from first call to install day.

Financing automotive two post lifts — how 0% APR actually works

We offer 0% APR financing on most automotive two post lifts through our lending partner. The standard package is 12 months of no-interest payments with a 90-day payment deferral, which means you can order the lift, install it, and get several months of use before the first payment posts. Longer terms — 24, 36, and 48 months — are available with modest interest, typically in the 6% to 9% range depending on credit and the current bank quote. For a farm-shop buyer working seasonal cash flow, the 90-day defer bridges the harvest-to-tax-refund window nicely.

Approval runs through a short online application, and decisions typically come back within a business day. What we tell customers up front: the monthly payment on a $4,000 lift at 12 months, zero interest, is $333. If you extend to 36 months at 8%, it’s around $125 a month. Neither number is punishing for a shop that runs even a handful of paid jobs per week. We don’t push the longer terms unless the buyer specifically wants them — most of our farm-shop and independent buyers pick the 12-month zero-interest path because the math is clean. When we quote automotive two post lifts, we always show the financed and cash prices side by side.

What your pre-purchase checklist should include

Before we ship a set of automotive two post lifts, we walk every buyer through a pre-purchase checklist. It’s short, but skipping it is where installs go wrong. First, confirm the vehicle mix — the heaviest and widest vehicle you plan to lift decides the capacity and arm configuration. Second, confirm the shop dimensions — ceiling height at the lowest point, clear width, bay depth, and door width. Third, confirm the slab — thickness, age, condition, and whether there’s rebar or wire mesh. Fourth, confirm the electrical — panel amperage, breaker space, and voltage available on your service.

Fifth on the list is unloading logistics. Do you own a forklift with 5,000 lb capacity? If not, do you have a tractor with pallet forks or a neighbor who does? Sixth is install labor — are you doing it yourself, hiring a local, or using our crew? Seventh is timing — when do you need the lift working? For our West Des Moines caller, the checklist took about fifteen minutes on the phone and flagged one issue: his breaker panel was maxed out and he needed to add a subpanel before install. Better to find that in April than in June with the lift sitting on his pallet outside.

Slab thickness and rebar verification

The most common surprise on a farm-shop install is slab thickness. Automotive two post lifts need a minimum of four inches of steel-reinforced concrete at 3,000 psi or better for standard 10K and 12K models. Heavy-duty 15K and 18K lifts often want five or six inches. Older farm buildings sometimes have three-inch slabs poured for equipment storage that never anticipated a lift, and pole barns from decades past can have as little as 3.5 inches with no rebar at all.

We verify slab with either a core sample or, if the building is new enough, the original pour spec from the concrete company. If the slab is thin, you have two options: pour a larger footprint pad in the lift bay to bring the local thickness up, or replace the slab entirely if you’re planning multiple bays. Both are quotes we can help coordinate with a local concrete contractor. Most Iowa builds we see are fine — modern pole-barn shops usually pour to four inches or better because the builder anticipates equipment loading. Older buildings need the check. When we quote automotive two post lifts to a farm-shop buyer, slab verification is line item one before anything else moves.

Electrical service and breaker sizing

Most automotive two post lifts run on 220V single-phase power at around 30 amps. Some heavy-duty models want three-phase, but for a farm shop or independent shop, single-phase is almost always the right call. What we verify before install is that the customer’s panel has an open double-pole 30-amp breaker slot, that the panel amperage overall isn’t already maxed out by shop tools and welders, and that the run distance from panel to lift isn’t so long that voltage drop becomes an issue.

Voltage drop is the sneaky one. A 40-foot run at 12 gauge is fine, but a 100-foot run to a distant outbuilding needs 10 gauge or heavier to keep the motor happy. Undersized wire causes slow lift speed and premature motor wear. For our West Des Moines caller with the maxed panel, we recommended a 60-amp subpanel run to the outbuilding, which gave him headroom for the lift plus a compressor and welder on the same feed. His electrician did that job in half a day, and by the time the lift arrived a week later the electrical was ready. Getting this right before the lift ships is worth the phone call every single time.

Ceiling clearance and column selection

Ceiling clearance on outbuildings varies wildly. Older farm shops might have 10-foot sidewalls with a 12-foot peak, and modern builds run 12 or 14 feet at the sidewall with taller peaks. For automotive two post lifts, the ceiling number that matters is the clearance directly above where the vehicle will sit when raised — that’s the peak, not the sidewall, on a pole-barn build with a pitched roof. Overhead-style lifts need at least 12 feet at the lift location; baseplate lifts can work in as little as 10 feet.

Column selection follows from ceiling and rise needs. Standard columns run around 145 inches tall, extended run 165 to 175. If the customer wants to lift full-size pickups to a full working height, we push extended columns whenever the building allows. If the ceiling forces standard columns, we make sure the buyer understands the trade-off: a big pickup won’t rise as high, meaning less clean headroom for working under it. For the West Des Moines shop with a 14-foot peak clearance, we specced an extended-column asymmetric 10K, which gave him 78 inches of working height under a half-ton pickup — the sweet spot for exhaust and driveline access.

Vehicle mix and capacity — sizing your automotive two post lifts

Capacity is where new buyers most often over-buy or under-buy. Our West Des Moines caller was thinking about a 12K, mostly because he’d heard “bigger is safer.” We asked what he was actually lifting: family sedan, half-ton pickup, occasional trailer. Everything on that list was under 6,500 lbs actual curb weight. A 10K lift covers all of it with comfortable margin, and 10K models are cheaper, more common in the used market for eventual resale, and easier to service because parts are in wider distribution.

We only push customers toward 12K, 15K, or 18K automotive two post lifts when the vehicle mix demands it — three-quarter and one-ton diesel pickups, dually work trucks, medium-duty commercial vehicles, or the occasional RV chassis. If the shop is mostly passenger cars and half-tons, 10K is the right size and buying larger just means bigger arms in the way for no benefit. The other angle: heavier lifts weigh more themselves, so freight and unloading are more expensive, and columns are taller, requiring more ceiling. Capacity planning is honestly one of the shortest conversations we have, but it’s the one where buyer instinct often points the wrong direction.

Signing off and setting the install date

Once the checklist is clean — vehicle mix, dimensions, slab, electrical, unloading, and financing — we lock the order and set the install date. From order confirmation to install, standard lead time is two to four weeks depending on the brand and freight schedule. Rotary and Challenger typically ship in seven to ten business days from order; some brands run longer. Once the lift arrives at the customer’s shop, our install crew coordinates with the buyer to pick an install day, and a two-column install typically takes half a day per bay from unloading to final function test.

For financing customers, the first payment posts about 90 days after order under our 0% APR terms. That means most buyers have the lift installed, running, and generating shop revenue before the first bill. If you’re in West Des Moines or anywhere in central Iowa and thinking about automotive two post lifts, call us at 800-674-9302 or browse the 2-post lift catalog. See related detail in our 2-post lift installation cost breakdown and financing guide.