An ALM lift shows up on a lot of collector wish lists once the garage fills up with cars that need more than a floor jack and a set of ramps, and that was exactly the situation for a client of ours up near the Iowa Great Lakes region last year. He had three vehicles he rotated through a storage building outside of Okoboji, and every time he needed to drop an exhaust or drop a driveshaft, he was on his back on cold concrete. He called us about an ALM lift after seeing one at a friend’s shop, and what started as a single phone call turned into a full year of install prep, a site survey, and eventually a first scheduled service call.
Browse two-post and four-post options built for underbody access, plus talk through your site survey with our Ames, Iowa team before you buy anything.
Why an ALM Lift Made Sense for a Collector’s Storage Building
Collectors up in the Great Lakes region tend to have a different set of priorities than a busy shop floor. This client wasn’t running eight cars a day through the bay. He had a handful of vehicles he cared about, and most of the wrenching he did himself was underbody work — exhaust systems, driveshafts, U-joints, occasionally a fuel line. An ALM lift, in his case a two-post configuration, gave him full access to all that without crawling under the car on a creeper for two hours at a stretch.
We talked through his options for a couple weeks before anything got ordered. He’d looked at four-post drive-on lifts too, since storage and easy loading mattered to him, but for the kind of driveline and exhaust access he wanted, a two-post won out. It leaves the underside completely open once the car is up, which matters when you’re chasing an exhaust leak or swapping a driveshaft and don’t want frame rails or crossmembers in your way. That’s the trade-off we walk every collector through — storage convenience versus full underbody access — and for his exhaust and driveline work, open access was the priority.
The Site Survey: What We Actually Look At Before Anything Ships
Before any lift like this leaves our warehouse, we want eyes on the building. For this client’s storage building, that meant a site survey covering ceiling height, floor slab condition, and door clearance. Storage buildings out in the Iowa Great Lakes area vary a lot — some are pole barns on thin slab, some are newer construction with real footings. His had been poured for equipment storage, so we had a good starting point, but we still checked slab thickness and asked about any reinforcement under where the posts would sit.
We also ask basic delivery questions early, the same ones we ask every customer: do you have a forklift on site, is there a loading dock, is there a pit anywhere near the install location. None of that applied here — no pit, no dock — so we planned a standard curb-side delivery with our crew handling positioning inside the building. Ceiling height was the other item on the list, since a two-post needs enough clearance for the vehicle plus the post height plus a safety margin. We measured twice before quoting anything, because there’s nothing worse than getting a lift delivered and finding out at install day that the ceiling’s four inches too short.
Concrete Readiness Is Where Most Delays Happen
If there’s one thing we tell every prospective owner, it’s that concrete readiness makes or breaks the install timeline. We’ve had jobs get pushed back weeks because a slab needed to cure longer, or because what looked like a solid floor turned out to be old and cracked underneath a coat of paint. For this collector’s building, the slab was about six years old and had never carried anything heavier than a riding mower and some totes, so we did a core check at the proposed anchor points before committing to a schedule.
Concrete thickness and PSI rating matter more for an ALM lift than most people expect going in. A two-post lift puts concentrated load on four to six anchor points, not evenly distributed across the slab like a car parked flat. We required a minimum thickness before we’d anchor into it, and thankfully his slab checked out. Where we’ve had trouble is with older storage buildings around the lakes that were poured decades ago for tractors and trailers — the slab is often thin at the edges even if it looks fine in the middle. We always tell people: get the survey done before you buy, not after, so a concrete problem doesn’t become a delivery-day problem.
Scheduling the Install Around Freight and Availability
Lead time is the other piece nobody thinks about until they’re staring at an empty spot in the garage. Once the order was placed, we gave him a realistic window rather than a guess, because freight on a lift like this depends on the manufacturer’s production schedule and the trucking company’s route through northern Iowa. We stayed in touch as the ship date got confirmed, and once we had a tracking number in hand, we could commit to an install date with confidence instead of promising something and having to walk it back.
We always ask the same logistics questions before we lock a date: is the site clear, is there power available near the install point, and has anything changed with the building since the survey. For this job, nothing had changed, so once the freight showed up, our crew was out within the same week. Coordinating around freight arrival is honestly one of the more underrated parts of getting an ALM lift installed smoothly — a lot of frustration in this business comes from lifts sitting on a dock somewhere while a customer waits, and we try hard to keep that gap short.
Install Day: Anchoring, Alignment, and Safety Checks
Install day itself went about like we expected based on the survey. Our crew anchored the posts per the layout we’d measured out in advance, checked plumb and level on both columns, and ran the lift through a full cycle before calling it done. For a collector who’s going to be doing his own exhaust and driveline work underneath the car, we spend extra time on that first walkthrough — showing him where the safety locks engage, how to position the arms for different vehicles, and what a proper load path looks like when the car’s up in the air.
We also covered the basics that get overlooked with a first-time owner: never work under a vehicle that isn’t resting on the mechanical safeties, always double-check arm restraints before climbing under for driveline work, and don’t assume every vehicle picks up in the same spot. His daily driver and his older project car had completely different lift points, and we walked through both so he wasn’t guessing later on his own.
The First Service Call: What Twelve Months of Use Looks Like
About a year in, he called us for a scheduled service visit, which is normal and something we recommend regardless of how light the use has been. We checked cables, inspected the hydraulic cylinder for any seep, and tested the locks again under load. Everything was in good shape, which isn’t surprising for a low-use collector setup, but it’s still worth the visit — small issues like a safety that’s slow to release, the same complaint we hear from busy dealership service departments, are easier to catch early than after a failure.
We also used that visit to answer questions he’d built up over the year — how often to grease the columns, what warning signs mean it’s time to call rather than wait for the annual visit, and how his usage pattern compared to a typical shop. For a low-cycle collector setup, annual inspection is usually plenty, but we always tell owners: if something feels off, don’t wait for the scheduled date, call us.
What We’d Tell Any Collector Considering an ALM Lift
Looking back at that first year, the things that mattered most weren’t glamorous — they were the site survey, the concrete check, and realistic scheduling around freight. Any collector in the Iowa Great Lakes region considering an ALM lift for exhaust and driveline access should start there, not with picking a color or arguing over accessories. Get the ceiling height measured, get the slab checked, and be honest about access for delivery.
We’ve installed these setups in old pole barns, newer storage condos, and everything in between around the lakes region, and the ones that go smoothly are almost always the ones where somebody did the homework up front. If you’re weighing an ALM lift for your own storage building or garage, we’d rather spend an hour on the phone with you before you order than have you deal with a surprise on install day. That’s really the whole philosophy behind how we handle every one of these jobs.
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