If you’re stacking a second or third project car in a farm shop outside the Des Moines metro, vehicle storage lifts can double your usable floor space without pouring a new slab. We hear this from restoration guys constantly – the shop has one bay for actual metal work and three more cars sitting on the ground taking up room. Before you spend money on any lift, though, there’s a site survey that has to happen first. We’ve walked into too many farm shops where the customer already picked out a lift online, only to find out the ceiling height, concrete, or door clearance won’t work. This checklist is what we actually walk through before we quote anything.
Browse storage and 4-post options built for farm shops and restoration bays, then call us for a site-specific quote before you buy.
Start With Ceiling Height, Not the Lift Spec Sheet
Every farm shop we survey around the Des Moines metro has a different truss height, and that number decides more than anything else. A lot of pole barns look tall enough from the ground, but once you account for a raised vehicle plus another vehicle parked on top for storage, you run out of room fast. We measure from finished floor to the lowest truss or lighting fixture, not just to the roof peak, because that’s the real obstruction.
Restoration guys especially get burned on this because they’re planning to park a project car up top for months at a time, not just run it up and down for service. That means you need clearance for the vehicle’s actual height plus the lift’s rise, plus a few inches of margin. We’ve had customers ready to order vehicle storage lifts sized for their dream setup, only to discover during the site visit that the shop’s overhead door header or a light bank sits right where the platform needs to go. Get a tape measure on the actual space before you fall in love with a spec sheet number.
Concrete: The Part Nobody Wants to Talk About
Farm shops built ten or twenty years ago rarely have concrete rated for a loaded two-post or four-post storage lift plus the vehicle sitting on it. This is the single biggest reason installs get delayed or cancelled after the lift is already on site. We ask for slab thickness, rebar or mesh reinforcement, and age of the pour before we ever schedule an install crew.
If your shop was built for tractors and hay wagons rather than car lifts, the anchoring points may need a thicker pad poured specifically under the lift footprint. This isn’t something you want to discover the day our install crew shows up with the equipment on a trailer. We’d much rather tell you up front that you need four to six inches of properly cured, unreinforced-crack-free concrete than have a lift anchored into a slab that can’t hold it. Vehicle storage lifts carry real static load for extended periods, which is actually harder on marginal concrete than a lift that cycles up and down all day in a normal service bay.
Door Height and Drive-In Clearance
This sounds obvious until you’re standing in a shop with an eight-foot overhead door trying to figure out how to get a raised truck or a tall project car in and out. If part of your plan is parking a lifted truck, a van conversion, or anything with aftermarket height, we need that number before we spec the lift. Some restoration shops end up choosing a four-post drive-on style specifically because it lets a lower-clearance vehicle park underneath the storage vehicle, maximizing what a single door opening can handle.
We also look at turning radius inside the shop. A lot of pole barns have plenty of square footage but a tight approach angle to the door, and backing a trailer or a low restoration project into position under a mezzanine-style lift takes more room than people expect. We’ll walk the approach with you and figure out if the layout supports the lift orientation you’re picturing, or if it needs to be rotated ninety degrees from what you first assumed.
Power, Lighting, and What’s Actually Available Out There
A lot of farm shops run off a single panel that was sized for lights, an air compressor, and maybe a welder – not for a hydraulic lift’s motor draw. Before we quote vehicle storage lifts, we ask what’s already on the circuit and whether there’s room for a dedicated run. This matters more for four-post and scissor-style storage lifts than for simple drive-on ramps, since the hydraulic pump needs its own reliable power.
We also talk lighting placement, because once a vehicle is parked up top for restoration storage, you still need to work underneath or beside the lower vehicle without a shadow line right where you’re welding or wrenching. This is a small thing that gets overlooked constantly. If your farm shop has one bank of lights down the center aisle, adding a storage lift changes where the shadows fall, and it’s worth planning fixture placement before, not after, install day.
Freight, Forklift Access, and Delivery Logistics
Vehicle storage lifts don’t show up in one box. Depending on the model, you’re looking at multiple crates with columns, cross beams, hydraulic components, and hardware, and all of it needs to come off a truck somewhere. We always ask if there’s a forklift on site or if our crew needs to bring one, and whether the truck driver can actually get a semi down the farm’s driveway and turn around near the shop door.
Rural properties around the Des Moines metro sometimes have gravel lanes, tight gates, or low-hanging tree branches that a standard freight truck can’t clear. We’d rather know that during the site survey than have a driver refuse delivery at the end of your lane. If there’s no forklift and no loading dock, we plan around that with our own equipment rather than leaving crates sitting on a trailer.
Matching the Lift to Actual Restoration Use, Not Just Storage
A lot of guys call this a
Our Clients Include: