An RV and trailer service shop in Council Bluffs bought automotive two post lifts from us fourteen months ago to expand into passenger-car restoration side work. The whole deal happened because of financing terms — not because they had cash on hand. This piece is their first year, told through the payment schedule and the cash flow that got them to break-even by month nine. If you’re a shop owner reading about a lift purchase for the first time, this is the ownership story we wish someone had written us before we started selling financed lifts.
0% APR, 90-day deferred payment through our First Business partner. Ask us for the worksheet before you sign anything.
Why an RV shop bought automotive two post lifts (not scissors)
An RV shop is a strange place for a 2-post lift. Their bread and butter is trailer bearings, brake service, and hitch installs on units that either roll under their own power or get jacked on stands. Nobody puts an RV on automotive two post lifts. But the shop owner wanted to add classic-car restoration to grow revenue in the winter when RV work dries up. A 2-post is the right tool for restoration — you can weld under a car, drop an exhaust, pull an engine — in ways a scissor can’t touch. He looked at a scissor lift for the bay and decided against it because the low-lift design of a scissor gets you off the floor but doesn’t give you the standing clearance you need for a real bodywork weld. A 2-post at full height gives you five feet eight inches of underbody working room on most cars. That is the difference between a restoration bay and a hobby-service bay. He wanted the real thing.
The financing conversation that made the whole thing possible
The lift plus install plus concrete work quote came to a five-figure number the shop could not write a check for. That’s most shops. It is why we offer financing through First Business — a 0% APR twelve-month program with a 90-day payment deferral on all automotive two post lifts we sell. The 90-day defer is the piece that made this deal work. It gave the shop three months to install, finalize the concrete cure, wire the electrical, and start doing restoration jobs before the first payment came due. By month four they had two restoration jobs completed and the revenue was covering the payment schedule. Without the 90-day defer the shop would have had a payment due before the lift was fully operational. That mismatch kills deals. If you’re a shop owner reading this and thinking about a lift purchase, ask every supplier what their payment schedule actually starts. The APR alone is not the whole story. Our financing reference breaks down the full terms.
0% APR terms and what to actually read in the paperwork
0% APR is a real 0% APR when First Business approves the deal. The paperwork is a straightforward promissory note. Twelve monthly payments. No prepayment penalty. What you should actually read: the late-fee clause, the acceleration clause, and the amount financed versus the amount purchased. On any financing of automotive two post lifts, freight and install can be financed separately or rolled in — read which one is which on your specific paperwork. The Council Bluffs shop rolled everything into a single financed amount because it kept their cash flow simpler. Some shops prefer to pay freight cash and finance the lift plus install, which lowers the monthly slightly. Neither is wrong. What is wrong is not reading the paperwork before you sign, and being surprised at month six by a fee you missed. If you have any question about the terms, call us at 800-674-9302 and we’ll walk through the sheet with you before you sign anything. Financing paperwork should not have surprises.
Down payment reality vs what the sales page said
Our financing page says zero percent down. That is the truth on the lift itself. What it does not say prominently is that install requires a deposit — typically a quarter of the install labor — at scheduling. The Council Bluffs shop was surprised by this and we take that as our own communication failure. The install deposit exists because the install crew has to travel, hold a date, and rent a crane for column raising if needed. If a customer cancels the day before install, we’ve already paid for the crane and the crew time. The deposit is refundable if we cancel, not refundable if the customer cancels inside 72 hours. On any purchase of automotive two post lifts you finance through us, plan for that install deposit as a separate line. It’s usually in the high hundreds to low four figures depending on the job. That is not part of the financed amount unless you specifically ask for it to be. We now flag this on the initial quote for every shop we work with — a direct result of the Council Bluffs experience.
Month three: first restoration job on a 1955 Chevy hood
Month three the RV shop took in its first restoration project — a ’55 Chevy that needed floor pan replacement, quarter panel repair, and a full underbody derust. The whole job was going to take four to six weeks. On automotive two post lifts, that means the lift is committed to one car for a month. That’s a scheduling reality of restoration work. Other jobs go around the restored car. The shop owner had planned for this, but his techs hadn’t — they were used to two-hour RV trailer jobs and were surprised by how much a lift bay slows you down when it’s holding a project car. The solution: they added a second bay on the ground for RV work and dedicated the lift bay to the restoration schedule. This is a real workflow lesson for any RV or general-service shop expanding into restoration. Buying the lift is easy. Rearranging the shop workflow around a car that lives on it for a month is harder. Plan the workflow before the columns bolt down.
Cash-flow lesson: install cost hit harder than the lift
By the end of year one the shop tallied their real cost of adding automotive two post lifts to the operation. The financed amount for the lift was under budget. What was over: install ancillaries. New concrete overlay in a corner where the old slab was too thin — mid four figures. A 220-volt drop from the panel — high three to low four figures. A shutoff switch on the bay wall — mid three figures. Bay ventilation for weld smoke — low four figures. Total ancillary was in the high four figures that they had not budgeted at planning. All of it was necessary and none of it was our line item. But it was real cash out of pocket during the 90-day defer window, and it strained the operation. Our advice, coming out of that experience: any shop planning a 2-post install should budget the lift plus freight plus install line at sixty percent of total project cost and reserve forty percent for ancillaries. Concrete, electrical, ventilation, floor markings, and a fire extinguisher upgrade all add up. Plan for it.
Payment schedule advice we give every shop now
Coming out of the Council Bluffs deal we changed how we quote financing on automotive two post lifts to shop buyers. Three things we now do that we didn’t do before. First, we send a total-project cost worksheet before the deal closes — lift, freight, install, concrete, electrical, ventilation — with our line items and estimated third-party costs clearly labeled. Second, we ask about the shop’s typical revenue cycle and time the 90-day defer window to close before their strongest revenue month, not before their weakest. Third, we recommend that the shop line up at least one signed customer contract for the new service capacity before the first payment comes due. All three of those changes came from the RV shop’s honest feedback at month twelve. Financing is a tool. Used well it lets a shop grow without eating capital. Used badly it puts pressure on a shop that hasn’t ramped revenue yet. Call us at 800-674-9302 before you finance a lift and we’ll walk through the numbers with you.
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