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Lift Safety
Lift it Right: Promoting the Importance of Lift Training and Certification
Hoffman Services has been at the forefront of lift safety, training and certification.
Poor Lift Safety
Poor Lift Safety can be incredibly dangerous not only for a lift operator but damaging to the vehicles involved. Hoffman Services ensures thorough training for all our lift installers and our quality assurance process provides an additional layer of safety and peace of mind.
Car Lift Post from WRECKED
A shop owner called for Joey and Tryk to rescue a van from a collapsed hydraulic car lift post. You may have caught this episode from the TV show Wrecked. There is a chance that the van’s weight exceeds the capacity limit for that type of two post lift. Drive-on alignment racks are safer for commercial heavy duty vehicles. Whoever installed the lift did a poor job, those concrete anchors obviously didn’t hold. Such heavy vehicle shouldn’t be lifted on a hoist at the first place. That’s down right negligent. The garage owner has probably not done any inspections on his equipment. The van used a custom paint job and received lots of dents and scratches due to the accident. They should have a long list of damages billed to the shop.
Truck Falls on Mechanic
A truck on a lift falls with someone under it? Yeah that’s probably any mechanic’s worst nightmare. Looking at this video, it is very clear that the problem is probably caused by an inexperienced mechanic. You do not jack up a vehicle while it’s on a lift. If you need to ease some load, you don’t keep pumping the jack until the car moves or jiggles. And he was lifting the vehicle off of the lift using a floor jack. Floor jacks are not meant to be lifting vehicles that are already off of the ground, so the jack either buckled or broke, and the vehicle fell. The mechanic was lucky the car didn’t crush him. But it looks like he’s going to have a major headache.
Stuck Between Lifts
More user error than lift error, the mechanic probably misjudged the width of the vehicle so it got stuck between the two lifts when they lowered it down. They had to manually jack it by hand from below to lift the truck up and free the truck from it. May not look like a big deal but this can probably damage the suspension arm and make the car unbalanced which is very dangerous. The mechanics joked around after the truck was freed. We hope no real damage was done.
Inexperienced Lift Operators
Looking at the video, it shows some careless actions on the part of the mechanics. They basically did not set the truck properly on the lift. The vehicle was obviously placed too far in front which left the vehicle unbalanced. In case you’re wondering, the arms didn’t fail. This is not an appropriate choice for lifting a truck given that it has to be in exactly the correct position. The car owner came in for a tire change and ended up having a damaged car. Not the greatest advertising for Tire Kingdom.
Breaking Lifts
Looking at the video, it shows some careless actions on the part of the mechanics. They basically did not set the truck properly on the lift. The vehicle was obviously placed too far in front which left the vehicle unbalanced. In case you’re wondering, the arms didn’t fail. This is not an appropriate choice for lifting a truck given that it has to be in exactly the correct position. The car owner came in for a tire change and ended up having a damaged car. Not the greatest advertising for Tire Kingdom.
Dodge Ram Falls off Hydraulic Lift
This one is scary. You’d certainly hate to be the owner of the truck or especially the mechanic working below it. Could’ve been an even worse scenario had this happened 10 seconds earlier. In this video, looks like the lift arm broke off when the mechanic went to move the truck. Or perhaps the second guy accidentally bumped the car while the car isn’t secured properly. The use of a center post lift is certainly questionable given the weight of the vehicle. Good thing no one was hurt. It is safe to say this mechanic is still counting his blessings and the garage may want to consider regular inspections of its equipment?
Car Falls Off Lift
While some may consider this scenario funny, we’re sure the car owners did not. This is probably another example of careless user behavior where a lock wasn’t set. There is a chance that a valve leak caused the issue but either way, placing another car under the lift is not great practice and now you have 2 very unhappy car owners, a fired hydraulic lift operator and a very angry garage owner.
Oversized Truck Falls Off Lift
We’re not sure if the lift failed, or if employees were not attentive, but this appears to be a lawsuit made in heaven. Did the employees misalign the lift, or underestimate the weight of the truck? Our guess would be there was too much weight in the bed. You can see all of the stuff on the ground that was in it. Either way, it couldn’t have been the driver’s fault, so we’re sure the car shop’s insurance totaled that vehicle. It’s a lose-lose scenario for both the car’s owner and the shop. Lessons learned with a heavy price.
