When a Davenport RV and trailer service shop called us last spring, they had already tried to make a scissor lift work for restoration and metal work — and they were done fighting it. They wanted automotive two post lifts that could handle a chassis stripped bare, a fifth-wheel gooseneck with the coupler still bolted on, and a passenger truck that needed brake work the same afternoon. We drove out, walked the bay, measured the ceiling, and started sketching. This is the first-year ownership story of that install, from the day we uncrated the columns to the moment the shop hit a hundred RVs and trailers on the new equipment — and it is the honest version, including the two things we would do differently the next time around.
In-stock Rotary and Challenger two-post lifts priced with delivery and install quoted upfront, so RV, trailer, and restoration shops know the full delivered-and-anchored number before they sign the purchase order.
Why the Davenport shop chose automotive two post lifts over a scissor
Their scissor lift had two problems that scissor lifts always have — a runway in the middle and a set of pivot arms that got in the way of every wheel-off restoration job on the calendar. When you are stripping a rear axle out of a passenger truck or sandblasting a rusted trailer crossmember, you need the underside of the vehicle wide open. Every scissor design compromises that space, and no amount of wrestling changes the fact that the machine itself is sitting under the work. The Davenport crew had lived with that compromise for four years and decided it was costing them jobs.
Two-post configuration solves the access problem by design. The columns sit at the corners, the arms retract under the sills, and there is nothing else in the way. For a shop doing restoration and metal work on RV frames, trailer decks, and passenger trucks alongside routine service, that clear underside is the whole point. The owner told us the scissor had been the biggest mistake of the shop’s first decade — not because it broke, but because it never fit the work. When we quoted the two-post replacement, the number he cared about was not the sticker; it was the labor hours he had been eating on every awkward job for years.
Overhead vs baseplate: the ceiling constraint that shaped the install
The Davenport building has a mixed ceiling — around 12 feet clear at the front bay, dropping to about 11 feet 6 inches at the back where the trusses come lower. That is right at the line for overhead automotive two post lifts, which typically want 12 feet or better for a comfortable install with a shut-off bar and hose routing overhead. Overhead was the owner’s first preference because it keeps the floor between the columns absolutely bare — no crossbar to walk over — but the back-of-shop truss drop made it a wrestle to justify.
We spec’d a baseplate configuration instead. Baseplate two-posts route the equalizer cables and hydraulic lines through a low crossbar at the floor rather than a header at the ceiling, which gives you back roughly 12 to 18 inches of vertical clearance. For an RV shop that occasionally lifts a truck with a rooftop rack or a trailer with a raised deck, that extra headroom paid for itself the first month. The tradeoff — a low crossbar you learn to step over — is real, but the shop crew got used to it inside a week, and no one has tripped or complained since. Read our two-post buying guide for the full overhead-versus-baseplate breakdown.
Install day: what actually happens when the truck arrives
Uncrating a two-post is a half-day event with the right prep and a full-day event without it. In Davenport, the shop had cleared the bay, marked the column anchor locations with our template, and had a fork truck ready to unload freight. We showed up with the columns, the hydraulic power unit, cables, arms, and a crate of hardware. The concrete was six inches thick with no rebar map available, so we hammered a scan pattern first — you do not want a wedge anchor blowing through into a heated floor line — and then drilled the eight anchors per column that the manufacturer specifies.
Setup goes column plumb, column square to the bay, then hydraulics and cables. The bleed is the slow part; you cycle the lift eight or ten times to purge air from the slave line before the ALI-required load test. We loaded a 6,500-pound passenger truck for the test, ran it top and bottom four times, and signed the paperwork. Total install time was seven hours, which is the middle of the normal range for a first-time crew learning the machine alongside us. The shop was back to invoiced work the next morning at eight, with no downtime bleeding into the second day at all.
First 90 days: what the shop learned on real jobs
The first ninety days on new automotive two post lifts are the shakedown. In Davenport, the shop ran roughly forty jobs across the two-post in that stretch — a mix of RV brake service, trailer suspension, and half a dozen full restoration teardowns on older Suburbans and Broncos the owner was building for private clients. The equalizer cables stretched slightly, as they always do in the break-in period, which meant one cable adjustment at the four-week mark. That is normal and expected on any two-post from any manufacturer.
The first surprise was the arm-restraint gears. On a rusted-out trailer with the tires off and the springs unloaded, the vehicle wants to shift as the crew loads and unloads tools. The arm restraints hold, but the crew learned to always lock the swing arms before walking away, even for a five-minute parts run. That habit is the difference between a boring day and a bad one, and it becomes automatic inside the first month. The second surprise was how much cleaner the concrete stayed under the columns compared to under the old scissor — no runway means no fluid drip funnel at all.
MIG welding under a lifted trailer: what changed for their metal work
Restoration and metal work is where the two-post pays for itself. Under a lifted trailer, a welder can move a foot in any direction without stepping over a scissor runway or ducking a pivot arm. The Davenport shop was cutting corroded trailer crossmembers and welding new steel almost daily by month three, and the difference in torch-to-work distance versus the old scissor was measured in shoulders and knees rather than hours on the clock. Their body man told us he stopped needing ibuprofen after the first month on the new equipment.
There is one caution with welding around automotive two post lifts. The hydraulic lines and equalizer cables run inside the columns and along the crossbar, and stray weld spatter or an arc-strike on a cable will end that cable’s life quickly. The shop hangs a welding blanket across the crossbar on any job with sustained welding, which takes ninety seconds and prevents a $600 cable replacement. That practice is not in most owner manuals, but it should be, and it is the first thing we tell every restoration shop that buys a two-post from us going forward.
Lessons from year one: what surprised the Davenport crew
The biggest year-one lesson was that the shop had been under-charging labor on every wheel-off job because the old scissor made the work slower. When they repriced their standard trailer brake and hub service after the two-post went in, revenue on those jobs went up almost twenty percent for the same billable time. That is not a story about the lift; it is a story about how equipment shapes what you can charge, and the Davenport owner said out loud that he wished he had made the switch three years earlier. That is why we push shops toward automotive two post lifts sooner rather than later.
The second lesson was seasonal. Davenport gets a cold snap in January, and the hydraulic fluid on their two-post thickened enough that the lift moved slower for the first ten minutes of every morning. We advised switching to a lower-viscosity hydraulic oil for winter, which they did in November of year one, and the cold-start delay disappeared. Every shop we install for in Iowa and eastern Illinois gets the same winter oil recommendation, and every shop that ignores it complains about the same slow morning until they finally change it.
What we would do differently for the next Davenport shop
Two things. First, we would run a subpanel to the lift instead of tapping the existing service. The shop’s original electrical panel was already at eighty percent capacity, and while the two-post pulls modest current, adding the compressor and a plasma cutter on the same feed later meant a service upgrade in month eight. If we had installed a small subpanel during the lift install, the upgrade would have been half the cost and half the downtime. On automotive two post lifts we install today, we always ask about future load before we pick a circuit. See our lift electrical requirements guide for the panel-load checklist.
Second, we would specify a taller arm-pad extension set at the time of purchase rather than as an add-on. RV and trailer work often puts pads on frame rails at odd heights, and the standard pad stack runs short more often than not. Ordering the tall extensions upfront saves a hundred dollars and a two-week wait. It is a small thing, but small things add up in a shop’s first year with a new lift, and by the time we finished the Davenport walkthrough at the one-year mark, both fixes were on our default install checklist for every RV and restoration shop.
Our Clients Include: