sbosecker
Well-known member
The good news! I took delivery of my BendPak XPR-10A-168 today.
The bad news! I haven't broke ground on the building it is going to go in yet.
I decided to act on the purchase because of a price increase that was going to take effect on October 1st.
So the lift will be stored in one of the bays of my house garage.
I sent BendPak my order at the end of September. Due to many commitments that were going to cause me to be away from home until the middle of October, I requested that my lift not ship until October 15th. BendPak not only agreed to do that, on the 14th I received a phone call from BendPak to confirm that shipping on October 15th was still OK. Very nice customer service from BendPak.
The lift shipped from California on October 15h and arrived in Newnan, GA some time on October 18th.
I had arranged for my lift to be shipped LTL via Con-Way Freight and to be delivered to a Con-Way facility about 12 miles from my home.
My plan was to pick up the lift at the Con-Way facility and to bring the lift home myself.
One of the challenges that I envisioned was the problem of getting the lift into the garage bay. I elected to make a couple of dollys (spelling?) out of 2x4's and some 250 lb rated 4" casters from Home Depot. I spent just under $10 for each caster. Each Dolly cost about $40 so they weren't cheap but I suspect this will not be the only time I will use them. They are pretty stout.
They needed to be stout. The shipping weight of the lift was 1890 lbs. The dimensions were listed as 24" x 42" x 150".
I used my Aluma 7712H Utility Trailer to carry the lift home from Con-Way. I removed the ramp for this task. The bed of the trailer is just under 12 feet of usable bed. I planned on having the lift loaded so that the front bracket of the lift package sat on the tongue of my trailer.
That plan worked fine. One mistake I made was not having something to spread the weight of the rear bracket over more of the bed of my aluminum trailer. I would guess that approximately a half ton of force was placed on that rear bracket. That was a lot of concentrated force and it deformed my bed in that area slightly. I'm pretty sure I could have avoided that by placing a 2x8 across the back of the trailer bed to spread the bracket load more uniformly.
I arrived a Con-Way and got a look at the lift before it was loaded. I was pleased that it appeared to be in very good condition. There was one torn area in the plastic wrap and a few small scrapes & rubs but, compared to some of the horror stories I've read, my lift had survived the long ride from California to Georgia in pretty good shape.
A Con-Way employee brought out a forklift, adjusted the forks to access the end of the lift package, and brought my lift package out to my trailer. It was loaded carefully and efficiently and I then spent considerable time securing the lift package to the trailer.
The trip home was uneventful and I backed up the trailer in front of the garage bay that was going to receive the Lift Package. Originally I had hoped to remove the entire package as a single unit and roll it into the garage bay. When I got home I decided that approach might be problematic.
My biggest concern with the "whole package" removal was I couldn't see what was under the cardboard and plastic wrap. I was afraid that wrapping a chain blindly around the package and then lifting might damage something. I decided to dismantle the package to be clear as to what stress might be applied to what during the lift off the trailer.
I removed two boxes strapped to the top of the package. I removed the "bump bar" that will be at the top of the lift when assembled. I removed the two larger lift arms.
That was everything I could remove without removing the 2'x2' end brackets.
I positioned my shop crane and was a bit dismayed to see that I couldn't get to the midpoint of the lift package due to the trailer wheels. I got as close as I could but, as I lifted, the rear bracket of the lift package wasn't coming off the trailer. Worse, even with the shop crane carrying a large part of the load, I couldn't move it manually either; it was too heavy.
I pulled out a floor jack and got it under the rear of the Lift Package. Now I was able to lift the rear of the Lift Package and start rotating it horizontally. The point of this rotation was to get the Lift Package brackets to a point that I could drop them down onto cribbing I had made out of some concrete solids that I had available.
Once the Lift Package was setting on the cribbing, I removed the shop crane and rolled the utility trailer out of the way.
I returned the shop crane back to the Lift Package and raised the Lift Package. I rotated the Lift Package so it would line up with the garage bay and dropped the Lift Package onto the dollys.
I moved the shop crane out of the way and started pushing the Lift Package manually towards the garage bay. I really didn't expect a single man pushing on the Lift Package to work - or at least not work very well. To my very pleasant surprise, I was able to push the Lift Package up the incline into the garage bay without too much effort. It was a beautiful thing!
All in all this evolution went pretty well. Pictures are attached. More pictures will be attached to the next post.
For the most part this was all done solo by me. My wife did help me carry the "bump bar" as it was awkward to handle by myself. She also assisted with removing a chock under a trailer wheel as I was steering the trailer away from the Lift Package after it had been placed on the cribbing.
Total time for the entire evolution, from leaving home to go the Con-Way facility to all tools and cribbing blocks back in storage, was about 6 hours.
Scott
The bad news! I haven't broke ground on the building it is going to go in yet.
I decided to act on the purchase because of a price increase that was going to take effect on October 1st.
So the lift will be stored in one of the bays of my house garage.
I sent BendPak my order at the end of September. Due to many commitments that were going to cause me to be away from home until the middle of October, I requested that my lift not ship until October 15th. BendPak not only agreed to do that, on the 14th I received a phone call from BendPak to confirm that shipping on October 15th was still OK. Very nice customer service from BendPak.
The lift shipped from California on October 15h and arrived in Newnan, GA some time on October 18th.
I had arranged for my lift to be shipped LTL via Con-Way Freight and to be delivered to a Con-Way facility about 12 miles from my home.
My plan was to pick up the lift at the Con-Way facility and to bring the lift home myself.
One of the challenges that I envisioned was the problem of getting the lift into the garage bay. I elected to make a couple of dollys (spelling?) out of 2x4's and some 250 lb rated 4" casters from Home Depot. I spent just under $10 for each caster. Each Dolly cost about $40 so they weren't cheap but I suspect this will not be the only time I will use them. They are pretty stout.
They needed to be stout. The shipping weight of the lift was 1890 lbs. The dimensions were listed as 24" x 42" x 150".
I used my Aluma 7712H Utility Trailer to carry the lift home from Con-Way. I removed the ramp for this task. The bed of the trailer is just under 12 feet of usable bed. I planned on having the lift loaded so that the front bracket of the lift package sat on the tongue of my trailer.
That plan worked fine. One mistake I made was not having something to spread the weight of the rear bracket over more of the bed of my aluminum trailer. I would guess that approximately a half ton of force was placed on that rear bracket. That was a lot of concentrated force and it deformed my bed in that area slightly. I'm pretty sure I could have avoided that by placing a 2x8 across the back of the trailer bed to spread the bracket load more uniformly.
I arrived a Con-Way and got a look at the lift before it was loaded. I was pleased that it appeared to be in very good condition. There was one torn area in the plastic wrap and a few small scrapes & rubs but, compared to some of the horror stories I've read, my lift had survived the long ride from California to Georgia in pretty good shape.
A Con-Way employee brought out a forklift, adjusted the forks to access the end of the lift package, and brought my lift package out to my trailer. It was loaded carefully and efficiently and I then spent considerable time securing the lift package to the trailer.
The trip home was uneventful and I backed up the trailer in front of the garage bay that was going to receive the Lift Package. Originally I had hoped to remove the entire package as a single unit and roll it into the garage bay. When I got home I decided that approach might be problematic.
My biggest concern with the "whole package" removal was I couldn't see what was under the cardboard and plastic wrap. I was afraid that wrapping a chain blindly around the package and then lifting might damage something. I decided to dismantle the package to be clear as to what stress might be applied to what during the lift off the trailer.
I removed two boxes strapped to the top of the package. I removed the "bump bar" that will be at the top of the lift when assembled. I removed the two larger lift arms.
That was everything I could remove without removing the 2'x2' end brackets.
I positioned my shop crane and was a bit dismayed to see that I couldn't get to the midpoint of the lift package due to the trailer wheels. I got as close as I could but, as I lifted, the rear bracket of the lift package wasn't coming off the trailer. Worse, even with the shop crane carrying a large part of the load, I couldn't move it manually either; it was too heavy.
I pulled out a floor jack and got it under the rear of the Lift Package. Now I was able to lift the rear of the Lift Package and start rotating it horizontally. The point of this rotation was to get the Lift Package brackets to a point that I could drop them down onto cribbing I had made out of some concrete solids that I had available.
Once the Lift Package was setting on the cribbing, I removed the shop crane and rolled the utility trailer out of the way.
I returned the shop crane back to the Lift Package and raised the Lift Package. I rotated the Lift Package so it would line up with the garage bay and dropped the Lift Package onto the dollys.
I moved the shop crane out of the way and started pushing the Lift Package manually towards the garage bay. I really didn't expect a single man pushing on the Lift Package to work - or at least not work very well. To my very pleasant surprise, I was able to push the Lift Package up the incline into the garage bay without too much effort. It was a beautiful thing!
All in all this evolution went pretty well. Pictures are attached. More pictures will be attached to the next post.
For the most part this was all done solo by me. My wife did help me carry the "bump bar" as it was awkward to handle by myself. She also assisted with removing a chock under a trailer wheel as I was steering the trailer away from the Lift Package after it had been placed on the cribbing.
Total time for the entire evolution, from leaving home to go the Con-Way facility to all tools and cribbing blocks back in storage, was about 6 hours.
Scott
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