The review
Many shops use vehicle lifts frequently, so factors such as safety, reliability, and speed are important. Those factors are multiplied when the shop is lifting heavy duty vehicles rather than small cars. Stephen Bush, fleet manager for the town of Davie, Florida, finds his shop’s Rotary Lift Flex Max mobile column lift, No. MCHM419U100, checks all of those boxes.
The town of Davie fleet uses two Flex Max lifts - a configuration of eight columns - and Bush says they work well for all of the vehicles in the fleet.
“We have fire engines, heavy trucks - mostly municipal vehicles - and emergency equipment,” he says.
According to Bush, the town of Davie fleet had a different set of lifts prior to this that weren’t quite up to the task.
“We had the [other] lifts before, and they were just a little under-sized for some of our trucks - [one of which is] a platform fire truck,” he says. “These [lifts] are heavy duty ... they pick up pretty quick. [The Rotary Lift columns] seem to have a lot less strain and go up a lot more effortlessly, even with the heavier vehicles.”
The quickness of the Flex Max keeps the town of Davie fleet shop efficient. Bush says it takes “maybe two minutes, if that,” to get a vehicle set up and ready to lift. And, according to Rotary Lift, the Flex Max can lift a vehicle in as little as 83 seconds.
Aside from its efficiency, Bush called out two other features he particularly likes about the Flex Max: “The remote and the weight display - those are probably the two biggest ones,” he says.
The remote control can automatically detect and connect all of the columns, syncing them together. The “weight display” Bush mentions is a digital gauge that displays the vehicle weight and height.
An important safety feature included with the Flex Max is Rotary Lift’s LockLight system. The system detects when the lift’s hydraulic pressure has been relieved - indicating it is resting on its locks - and illuminates a green light so that technicians know it is safe to work under the vehicle.
On the topic of lift safety, Bush notes that while day-to-day lift maintenance is handled in-house, he has the lifts inspected and maintained annually by a third party.
Bush is pleased with the upgrade from his shop’s old lift system to the Flex Max.
“They’re really good,” he says. “We’ve been pretty happy with them.”
