We get this call almost every week from small fleet owners and side-hustle mechanics around the Des Moines metro: they’ve outgrown floor jacks and jack stands and they want an auto home lift they can trust for daily maintenance, but they can’t decide whether to buy used or new. It’s a fair question, because the price gap between a clean used two-post and a brand-new one can be significant, and a home lift is a long-term piece of equipment either way. We install and service both configurations across central Iowa, and we’ve watched enough of these decisions play out over years to know where used makes sense and where it quietly costs more than new.
Compare Atlas and BendPak home lift packages, check ceiling clearance, and get freight and install pricing for the Des Moines metro before you buy new or used.
What “Used” Actually Means in a Home Garage Setting
When someone tells us they found a used lift on a classifieds site or at an equipment auction, the first thing we ask is where it’s been standing and what it was doing there. A lift that spent five years in a heated shop doing light passenger car work is a very different animal than one pulled out of a tire shop that ran two shifts a day. For an auto home lift specifically, most used units on the market come from small independent shops closing up or upgrading, and the mechanical bones are often fine. What’s usually worn is the stuff people don’t think to check: cable stretch, hydraulic fluid condition, worn arm restrictor pins, and anchor bolts that were never torqued to spec in the first place.
We’ve picked up used lifts for Des Moines metro customers where the seller didn’t have a forklift on site, which turns a simple pickup into a logistics problem, so factor that into your used-lift budget before you get excited about the sticker price. We also always ask if there’s a pit or if it’s a surface-mount unit, because that changes the anchoring plan entirely. Our advice: never buy a used lift sight unseen. Have someone who installs lifts for a living look at the cylinders, cables, and welds first, or you may save on the purchase and lose it all on parts and labor within the first year.
What You Get Paying Full Price for a New Auto Home Lift
New isn’t just about shine. When you buy a new auto home lift through us, you get a current warranty from the manufacturer, documentation that matches the serial number, and a unit built to the current ALI/ANSI standard rather than whatever standard applied when a used unit left the factory ten or fifteen years ago. For Atlas and BendPak, the brands we install most often in home and small-fleet garages, that also means correctly matched hardware, current-spec safety locks, and cables sized for the exact model rather than a mismatched replacement someone welded in years ago.
New equipment also lets us plan the install around your building instead of working around what the lift demands. We ask about ceiling height, door clearance, and floor thickness on every quote, and with a new auto home lift we know exactly what those numbers need to be because the spec sheet is current. Freight timing is worth planning for too — depending on the model, lead times can run out several weeks, so if you need it running by a certain date, order early rather than assuming it’ll show up next week.
Side-by-Side: Total Cost Over Five Years
Sticker price is the easiest number to compare and the least useful one. A used two-post might run half of what a new one costs up front, but if it needs new cables, a cylinder reseal, fresh anchors, and a service call to true up the arms, that gap shrinks fast. We’ve seen customers spend close to what a new unit would have cost just getting a rough used lift safe and level, and that’s before accounting for downtime while parts ship.
On the new side, you’re paying more day one but you’re not guessing about hours of prior use, and the warranty covers early failures that would otherwise come out of your pocket. For a small fleet doing general daily maintenance — oil changes, brake jobs, tire rotations, inspections — the lift gets used constantly, and constant use is exactly where a worn used unit shows its age fastest. If your shop runs one vehicle through per day, the math tilts toward new. If it’s occasional home use on your own vehicles, a well-vetted used unit can genuinely make sense.
Installation Logistics: Concrete, Clearance, and Access
Whether used or new, the install questions are identical, and they’re the ones people underestimate. We need to know your slab thickness and age before we touch a drill, because thin or cracked concrete won’t hold anchors reliably under a loaded lift. We ask about ceiling height with the vehicle raised to full lift height, not just garage door height, because that’s the number that actually determines whether a two-post or a low-rise unit fits your space.
Access matters just as much. If the lift is being delivered to a residential driveway rather than a commercial dock, we plan for a liftgate truck and confirm someone will be there to help stage it. Homes in tighter Des Moines metro neighborhoods sometimes have narrower garage door openings than expected, and we’ve had to break units down further than planned to get them through a doorway. None of this changes based on used versus new, but it does change based on whether the seller of a used unit can tell you accurate specs — and often they can’t, which is one more point in favor of buying new from a source that has the actual documentation.
Where Small Fleets in the Des Moines Metro Land on This Decision
Most of the small fleet operators we work with around the Des Moines metro end up choosing new once they run the numbers on downtime. If a lift goes down during a work week and a business depends on it to turn vehicles, the cost of a technician visit and shipped parts adds up faster than the price difference between new and used ever did. For someone maintaining two or three personal or company vehicles at home, occasional use forgives more, and a carefully inspected used auto home lift can run for years without drama.
We’ve installed both scenarios plenty of times. One operator we worked with was replacing several older scissor lifts at once and wanted separate quotes for removal versus new installation, because they hadn’t decided whether to tear out the old units themselves — that kind of phased decision-making is common, and it’s smart. You don’t have to commit to everything at once. Get quotes for both paths, decide what your actual usage looks like, and build the plan around that rather than the up-front number alone.
Warranty, Parts Availability, and Long-Term Support
A warranty is only as good as the support behind it, and this is where used units fall short no matter how good they look on delivery day. Manufacturer warranties on an auto home lift typically don’t transfer to a second owner, or they transfer with major restrictions, so a used unit is often running unprotected from day one. New units carry full coverage, and when something does fail early, that’s on the manufacturer, not your wallet.
Parts availability matters just as much five years down the road. We stock and source parts for Atlas, BendPak, and the full range of brands we install, and when a customer calls needing a cylinder reseal or a specific cable by part number, having the correct model and serial number on file makes that call five minutes instead of an hour of guessing. Used lifts that have been resold once or twice sometimes arrive with mismatched parts from a prior repair, which slows down every future service call. If you go used, keep the paperwork, note the exact model, and don’t assume the seller’s memory of what parts are on it is accurate.
How We’d Advise You to Decide
If we’re being straight with you: buy new if the lift is going to see daily commercial use, if you can’t verify the used unit’s history, or if downtime would actually cost you money. Buy used only if you can get eyes on it before purchase, ideally from someone who installs lifts professionally, and only if you’re comfortable budgeting for cables, hydraulic service, and anchor work as likely near-term costs rather than surprises.
Either way, get the concrete, ceiling clearance, and access details sorted before delivery day, not after the truck shows up. We quote both new equipment and inspection or install work on used units throughout the Des Moines metro, and we’d rather walk you through the real tradeoffs on a call than have you find out the hard way six months in. An auto home lift is a decade-plus purchase when it’s done right, so it’s worth the extra week of research before you commit either direction.
Our Clients Include: