Automotive two post lifts show up on a flatbed weighing thousands of pounds, and how you get that crate off the truck matters just as much as which lift you buy. We had a body shop foreman in West Des Moines call us last fall asking about stacking a couple of extra lifts into his back bay for seasonal vehicle storage — snowbirds parking cars for the winter, seasonal trade-ins, project vehicles waiting on parts. He had the floor space and the ceiling height. What he didn’t have figured out yet was freight. That’s where a lot of these deals actually get stuck, and it’s the part of the buying process nobody talks about until the truck is already backing into the lot.
Browse Rotary and Challenger two post models sized for storage bays, then talk freight and install scheduling with our Iowa team before you commit.
Why Storage Bays in West Des Moines Are Buying Automotive Two Post Lifts
Seasonal storage is a bigger driver of two post lift sales than people expect. A body shop or independent garage in the West Des Moines area doesn’t just fix cars — it holds them. Insurance jobs waiting on parts, collector cars parked for winter, fleet vehicles rotated in and out by the season. Floor space is finite, so stacking vehicles vertically on a lift, even just parked up in the air, doubles your usable footprint without expanding the building.
We see this most with body shops and independent repair facilities that already run a couple of two post lifts for actual repair work and want one or two more purely for parking. The math is simple: a 10,000 lb or 12,000 lb symmetric lift holds a sedan or light truck off the ground indefinitely, freeing the bay below for something else, or just clearing floor space so techs aren’t threading around parked cars all day. It’s not glamorous, but it’s one of the most practical reasons a shop expands its lift count.
What Freight Actually Looks Like When the Lift Shows Up
Every two post lift we ship arrives on a flatbed, usually in two to four crates depending on the model — posts, carriages, hydraulic unit, and hardware packed separately. The first question we ask before we even schedule delivery is whether you have a forklift on site. That single question determines almost everything about how smooth the day goes. If you’ve got a forklift and someone who knows how to run it, unloading takes twenty minutes and the driver is back on the road.
If there’s no forklift, we work out alternatives ahead of time — a tailgate lift truck, a liftgate delivery, or coordinating with a rigging service nearby. What we don’t want is a truck showing up to a shop with no plan and a driver who won’t unload by hand, because that post weighs more than most people can safely muscle around, even with two or three guys. We ask about this on every quote call for a reason: it’s the single most common holdup we run into with two post lift deliveries, more than the install itself.
Forklift Logistics and Dock Access Around West Des Moines
Not every shop bay was built with freight delivery in mind. Some body shops have a dock door and a forklift sitting right there. Others have a single garage-door bay on a residential street with no room for a semi to maneuver. Before we ship anything, we talk through the actual site — is this a shop or a residence, is there alley access, how far is the truck going to have to back in, and is there anything overhead like power lines or a low awning that a flatbed can’t clear.
We’ve delivered to shops sitting an hour or more outside the metro without issue, because the logistics were planned in advance. We’ve also seen deliveries turn into a half-day headache because nobody asked about dock height until the truck was already on site. If your shop doesn’t have a forklift, tell us that up front — we’ll either bring lift-gate service into the freight quote or coordinate a local rigger so the crates get off the truck safely and nothing gets damaged sitting on a curb waiting for a plan.
Concrete and Pit Readiness Before the Truck Even Shows
Freight and concrete readiness go hand in hand more than most buyers realize. We won’t schedule a delivery until we know the floor can handle the anchoring, because a lift sitting in crates in your parking lot for two weeks while you get concrete poured is nobody’s idea of a good time. For older buildings — the kind that housed a repair shop for twenty or thirty years before changing hands — we usually recommend a core sample or at minimum a good look at the slab thickness before the truck leaves our dock.
This matters even more for pure storage use, because shops sometimes want to squeeze automotive two post lifts into a corner of the building that was never meant for heavy equipment — an old storage room, a lean-to addition, anywhere with a roof and four walls. We’ve had customers ask about installs at a residence rather than a commercial shop, and the same rule applies: check the slab, check the ceiling height, and don’t let the freight schedule get ahead of the site prep. Get that sequence backwards and you’re paying for a second trip.
Choosing the Right Capacity for Storage Versus Daily Repair Use
A lift bought purely for seasonal storage doesn’t need the same spec as one running ten cycles a day in a repair bay. If the plan is parking sedans and light trucks for months at a time, a 9,000 or 10,000 lb symmetric two post lift covers nearly everything a body shop sees. If you’re storing anything heavier — three-quarter-ton trucks, work vans, the occasional SUV loaded with equipment — step up to a 12,000 lb model so you’re not second-guessing the rating every time a bigger vehicle rolls in.
We also get asked whether asymmetric or symmetric arm configuration matters more for storage than repair use. For pure parking, it matters less — you’re not swinging doors open constantly to work underneath. But we still lean toward asymmetric arm geometry when a shop tells us the same bay will double as a working bay part of the year, because door clearance and driver step-out room still matter when a tech needs to get in and move the vehicle. Buy for the busier use case, not just the quiet season.
Installation Scheduling Once the Freight Lands
Once the crates are off the truck and sitting in the bay, installation is its own separate step, and we schedule that as a distinct visit rather than assuming it happens the same day freight arrives. Our crews anchor the posts, run and route the hydraulic lines, set the carriages, and run a full cycle test before we call the job done. For a straightforward two post install on a ready slab, that’s typically a single-day job for our techs.
Where it gets longer is when the old lift needs to come out first. We’ve had shops ask us to disassemble an existing unit and haul it off before the new lift goes up, which adds time but keeps the bay usable right up until the swap happens. If you’re planning seasonal storage capacity for the fall or winter, book the install a few weeks ahead — our schedule fills up fast in the months leading into cold weather when everyone wants extra covered parking sorted before the first freeze.
Working With a Local Iowa Installer Instead of a Distant Supplier
A lot of the headaches we hear about with automotive two post lifts trace back to buyers working with an out-of-state supplier who quotes a price but has no local presence to handle freight, site prep, or install scheduling. We’ve fielded plenty of calls where a shop bought a lift somewhere else and then needed someone local to actually put it together and get it running. That’s a harder, more expensive way to do this than getting freight, site readiness, and installation coordinated by the same team from day one.
Being based in Ames means we can walk a West Des Moines body shop through every step — quoting the lift, scheduling the freight around your forklift situation, checking your slab before the truck leaves, and having a crew on site to finish the install correctly. We also stand behind the work afterward, which matters if you ever need service, a cylinder reseal, or a part replaced down the road. Buying automotive two post lifts locally isn’t just convenient — it’s the difference between a smooth delivery day and a truck sitting in your lot with nowhere to go.
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