A car lift for storage was the whole reason a Des Moines metro overland builder called us in the first place. He had three rigs — a daily driver, a built Tacoma with 35s, and a project 4Runner waiting on suspension work — and exactly two parking spots in a detached garage. He needed to stack a vehicle up in the air just to fit everything, and he wanted somewhere he could still rotate 35-inch mud tires and get under the rig for wheel work without crawling on a creeper. That’s a real problem we see constantly around central Iowa, and it usually comes down to one decision: buy a used lift off Facebook Marketplace, or order new through a distributor like us.
Browse BendPak and Atlas storage lifts sized for garage ceilings, oversized tires, and Iowa concrete — with install included.
The Overlanding Problem: Big Tires, Small Garage
Overland-built trucks and Jeeps eat garage space differently than a stock car. A lifted rig on 35s or 37s is taller, wider, and often has rock sliders or bumpers that hang past a normal parking footprint. When our customer walked us through his garage, the real constraint wasn’t floor space — it was ceiling height and door clearance. A car lift for storage only works if the vehicle sitting on top still clears the header when the door needs to open, and if the columns don’t box in the door swing on the vehicle parked underneath.
We measured his garage at just over 11 feet to the lowest truss, which is tight but workable for a two-post storage-rated lift with a low-profile top beam. If he’d wanted to stack the built Tacoma on top with its roof rack and awning still attached, we’d have been having a very different conversation about ceiling height or a different lift style entirely. This is the first thing we check on every storage lift consultation in the Des Moines metro — not the lift, the room.
Why Tire Rotation Changed the Whole Plan
Most homeowners buying a car lift for storage just want a place to park a second vehicle. This customer also wanted to do his own tire rotations and wheel work on the built truck — 35-inch tires are heavy, awkward, and expensive to have a shop rotate every few thousand miles. That single requirement ruled out some of the cheapest storage-only lifts on the market, which aren’t built with drive-on ramps or arms positioned to let you pull wheels safely.
We steered him toward a two-post configuration with adjustable arms rated to lift from the frame, not just a flat parking platform. That way the lift does double duty: park-and-store most of the time, but drop the arms under the frame and pull all four wheels when it’s rotation season or he’s swapping in a new set of mud terrains. If your storage lift can’t also support wheels-off work, you’ll end up buying a second lift or a set of jack stands anyway — and at that point you’ve spent the money twice.
The Used vs. New Decision Framework
Every week we get a call from someone who found a car lift for storage on Marketplace for a fraction of new pricing, asking us to install it. We’re honest about what that involves. A used lift is a gamble on cables, hydraulic seals, and safety locks you didn’t spec — and those parts wear out at different rates depending on how the previous owner used and maintained it. We’ve been called out to lifts where the locking mechanism failed mid-cycle and left a vehicle hanging with a tire off the platform, which is not a situation you want in your own garage with your family walking past it.
For this customer, we ran the numbers both ways. A comparable used two-post storage lift locally was maybe 40-50% of new cost, but it came with unknown cylinder condition, no warranty, and a strong chance we’d need to source replacement cables or a control valve within the first year. New through a distributor meant a documented lift, a manufacturer warranty, and cables and locks we could actually get parts for later. Given that he planned to keep vehicles stacked on it for years and use it for wheel work — not just occasional storage — new won out. If your use case is truly light and occasional, used can make sense; we just want you going in with eyes open.
Freight, Lead Time, and Getting the Timing Right
New lifts don’t show up overnight. Depending on the manufacturer and the season, we’ve seen storage lift orders run anywhere from a couple weeks to over a month out from the distributor before it even reaches our shop for scheduling. We tell every customer this up front so nobody’s left wondering why their garage sits empty for weeks after they’ve already paid a deposit. We book a tentative install date as soon as we get a firm ship window, then confirm once the lift physically lands.
On delivery day, logistics matter more than people expect. Do you have a way to get a few hundred pounds of steel off a truck and into the garage — a forklift, a pallet jack, or at minimum a flat, clear path? Is there a step up into the garage that a hand truck can’t handle? We ask these questions before install day, not on it, because a crew standing in your driveway trying to solve a loading problem costs everyone time. For this Des Moines metro job, a standard residential driveway and a level concrete slab meant no surprises.
Concrete, Anchoring, and Why We Don’t Skip It
A car lift for storage puts real point loads into your slab, especially with a vehicle parked on top for weeks at a time. We check slab thickness and condition before we ever set columns, and on this job the existing garage floor was original builder-grade concrete — thick enough, but we still cored and set proper anchor bolts rather than taking a shortcut. Skipping anchoring on a storage lift is one of the more common corners we see cut by less careful installers, and it’s the kind of thing that shows up later as a lift that walks or racks over time.
We also talked with him about floor protection, since he’d mentioned wanting to keep the space clean for detailing work between builds. Storage lift installs need extra care not to mar epoxy or sealed floors, and that’s part of why a professional install costs more than just bolting down a bare structure — there’s masking, careful handling, and a level check that a DIY install often misses. None of that shows up in a listing price, but it shows up in how the lift performs five years in.
Two-Post vs. Four-Post for a Storage Garage
For pure storage with occasional wheel work, we generally point overlanding customers toward two-post drive-on or frame-engaging lifts over four-post platforms, mainly because four-post decks eat more floor width and can make wheel-off work harder without a rolling jack bridge. But four-post storage lifts do have an advantage for someone who never plans to pull wheels and just wants to park and forget it — there’s no arm positioning, no frame contact points to double check, just drive up and go.
We walked our customer through both configurations before he committed. Because tire rotation and wheel work were non-negotiable for him, the two-post won out despite needing more careful setup. If your car lift for storage is strictly for parking a second vehicle with zero maintenance work planned, a four-post deserves a serious look — it’s simpler, and for pure storage that simplicity is worth something.
What We’d Tell Anyone Shopping a Storage Lift in Iowa
If you’re weighing a car lift for storage anywhere in the Des Moines metro or across Iowa, start with three measurements before you shop: ceiling height to your lowest obstruction, slab thickness and condition, and your actual power situation — some storage lifts need a 220-volt outlet that isn’t standard in every garage, and that electrical work has to happen before install day, not the morning of. We’ve had installs pushed back weeks because a required outlet and a city inspection weren’t lined up in time.
Then decide honestly whether you’re storing only, or storing and working. That single answer drives whether used makes sense, which lift style fits, and how much you should expect to spend. We’d rather talk you out of the wrong lift on the phone than install the wrong one in your garage.
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