A northwest Iowa collector called us in early 2025 with a specific problem: he’d built up a six-vehicle collection over 20 years, everything from a numbers-matching Mustang to a modern German sedan, and he was doing every oil change on jack stands on a cold shop floor. He wanted a car lift, and he was trying to decide between a used one he’d found on marketplace for cheap and a new one financed through us. What follows is his first-year ownership story, including how we walked him through the used-versus-new decision, what actually happened between install and his first anniversary, and what he’d tell a friend at year one.
Rotary, Challenger, and BendPak commercial-grade lifts with 5-year structural warranty and full Iowa parts support. Financed 12 months no interest.
The Used Lift He Almost Bought
The marketplace listing was a two-post car lift, unknown brand, no ALI label visible in the photos, 12 years old, uninstalled and “broken down for transport.” Asking price roughly a third of a comparable new lift. He asked us to help him evaluate it before he drove three hours to pick it up. We looked at the photos: columns had visible rust at the base, the hydraulic cylinder had a wet spot on the piston shaft, and there was no manufacturer decal or serial plate we could read.
Our honest advice was to walk away. Not because used lifts are always bad — plenty of solid used lifts change hands every year — but because this specific one had no traceable brand, no parts availability, and visible red flags. If a hydraulic cylinder seal has failed, replacement on a name-brand lift is $150 to $400 in parts. On a no-name lift, the cylinder is often a proprietary size and either unavailable or requires a full custom replacement at $1,500-plus. That kind of hidden cost eats the used-lift savings very fast.
The Used-vs-New Decision Framework
Here’s the framework we walked him through. A used car lift can be a great buy if: it’s an ALI-Gold-labeled brand still in production (Rotary, Challenger, BendPak, Forward, Atlas commercial), the serial plate is legible, the previous owner has maintenance records, cables and hydraulic components are within life expectancy or the seller has documented replacements, and you can inspect it under load before purchase. Meet all those criteria and a used lift at 40 to 50 percent of new price is a legitimate deal.
A used lift is a bad buy when: brand is unknown, no ALI label, no serial plate, cables show any visible wear, hydraulic components show any weep, columns have rust at the base plates, or the seller can’t tell you when it was last used. Under those conditions, you’re buying a project, not a lift. For a collector who wants to actually work on cars and not restore a lift, new (or dealer-refurbished) is usually the answer.
The New Lift He Bought
He ended up ordering a 10,000 lb symmetric two-post car lift with three-stage arms from us. Reasoning: his heaviest vehicle was a Suburban at about 6,000 lb curb weight, well under the capacity. Three-stage arms would let him lift the low-slung Mustang without spacers and the Suburban with equal ease. Symmetric was right for his mix. Total install cost, including a 4-inch anchor pad repour in one spot where his 1990s slab was thin, landed in the low double-digit thousands financed at zero percent APR over 12 months.
Delivery took two weeks. Install day was a Wednesday in April. Our crew set the anchors, cycled the lift, and trained him on arm placement for his five most common vehicles. Total install time was about 6 hours including the concrete cure wait on the repour section from the previous week. By that evening he had the Mustang up in the air changing oil for the first time in his life without a creeper. He sent us a photo. It made our week.
Month One Through Three: The Oil Change Reality
Oil changes on jack stands take him about 45 minutes per car including cleanup, and hurt his back for the rest of the day. On the new car lift, oil changes dropped to about 15 minutes per car, no back pain, and he could see everything he was doing under strong overhead light. Across six vehicles at his typical interval (every 6 months for driven cars, once a year for stored), he estimated the lift was saving him roughly 6 hours a year on oil changes alone.
That’s not the big story though. The big story was inspection. On jack stands, he never really looked at the underside of his cars. On the lift, he found a leaking rear differential seal on the Suburban that would have grenaded the rear end in another 6 months, a chafed brake line on the Mustang from a poorly routed replacement 15 years ago, and a rodent-damaged fuel line on a car that had been in storage for two years. Every one of those was a preventable disaster. The lift paid for itself in avoided damage inside 90 days.
Month Four Through Six: Learning What the Lift Won’t Do
He also learned the lift’s limits. It’s not a body lift — he can’t easily do rocker panel work on the Mustang because the pinch welds are the lift points and he needs to lift from other points to access the rockers. Solution: he has a set of frame-rail adapters on order for that specific job. It’s not a full alignment lift — he can’t do a four-wheel alignment on it because it’s a two-post. He accepted that; alignment goes out to a specialty shop.
And it’s not a wheel-service machine on its own. Tire rotation is easy on a two-post car lift, but changing tires requires a tire machine. He’d been debating adding one. We ended up quoting him a Rotary tire changer as a follow-up, which he decided to defer. Point being: the lift is one piece of a full home shop, not the whole shop. Buying a lift and thinking you’ve built a full service bay is a rookie mistake. Plan the other tools too.
Month Seven Through Ten: A Small Warranty Claim
End of October he noticed an intermittent buzzing from the driver-side hydraulic power unit motor when raising the lift. Not a failure, but not normal. He called us, we diagnosed a sticking contactor over the phone, and shipped a warranty replacement overnight. He swapped it Saturday morning in about 20 minutes, and the buzzing was gone. Total cost to him: zero, covered under the 1-year electrical warranty on the lift. Total downtime: from Friday evening call to Saturday morning fix.
That’s the used-versus-new argument in one story. If he’d bought that unknown-brand marketplace lift, the sticking contactor would have been a rabbit hole. Was the contactor a standard size? Where do you buy one? Is the wiring color-coded to a service manual? On a name-brand car lift under warranty, none of those questions matter. You call, we ship, you swap. Done. That kind of frictionless support is what you’re paying for when you buy new from a real dealer.
Year One: What He’d Tell a Friend
At his one-year anniversary I asked him what he’d tell another collector debating used versus new. His answer, condensed: “Buy new from someone local unless the used lift is a name-brand less than 10 years old with maintenance records and you can see it working. Otherwise the savings evaporate the first time something breaks and you can’t get a part.” He also added that the financing on our lift felt “like getting the lift for free for the first three months” because of the 90-day deferral.
Year two he’s planning to add a four-post storage lift for winter storage of the Mustang and a second sedan. That’s on our schedule for next spring. His collection is bigger and better maintained than it was 12 months ago, his back hurts less, and he’s caught three problems that would have cost real money down the line. If you’re a northwest Iowa collector on the fence between a marketplace car lift and a new one, take his year of experience seriously. Call 800-674-9302 or email founder@autoliftserv.com and we’ll help you make the same decision, honestly.
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