The Collision Vision podcast, driven by Autobody News and hosted by Cole Strandberg, recently welcomed Dave Wiederschall, national account manager at BendPak, to discuss the importance of proper lift usage, best practices for safety and maintenance, and how ergonomically designed equipment can improve technician health and shop performance, and perhaps even be used as a recruiting tool.
Why is Lift Safety Important?
“Why do you want to be safe when you have 2 to 3 tons above your head?” Wiederschall said.
“Pretty obvious on the surface, no doubt,” Strandberg acknowledged.
Technicians need to be mindful of weight distribution when working with vehicles, Wiederschall said. In regards to lift safety, that means verifying they have the right accessories when needed, like high lift jack stands, and are considering what large pieces of the vehicle are being moved around while on the lift and how to compensate for that.
Strandberg asked about the main risks associated with improper lift usage.
“There's the big one,” Wiederschall said. “You don't want to drop a vehicle. Dropping a vehicle is extremely hazardous.”
While it can cause more costly damage to the vehicle, the bigger worry is the potential for injury to a technician.
“In our industry, we see so many accidents that could have been avoided with just a little bit more attention to detail when it comes to how you're loading a vehicle,” he said.
Wiederschall couldn’t put a number on how often lift accidents happen, but he suggested searching YouTube for “lift failure” to see what it looks like.
“It’s a real thing,” he said.
“When you watch a lot of those videos, you're going to notice that the lift didn't fail, the car fell off -- and that's because it wasn't loaded properly,” he said. “You had a weight imbalance.”
It’s easy for techs to get complacent with equipment they use on a regular basis. Many of the videos of “lift failures” show vehicles that weren’t being supported at the right place, or weren’t lifted using the right adapters.
“It's easy to look at the ‘fail’ videos and kind of laugh at them,” Wiederschall said. “But that costs somebody a lot of money. That cost a shop owner a lot of money, that potentially raised somebody's insurance. And the potential for injury was immense. If somebody hadn't just sidestepped at the right moment, that would not be a funny internet fail video. It would be a tragedy.”
Best Practices for Collision Shop Owners
Wiederschall said BendPak is a member of the Automotive Lift Institute (ALI), which offers several resources to shop owners to verify their technicians are lifting vehicles properly.
“All of our ALI-certified lifts come with an ALI lift guide,” Wiederschall said, and there are resources online.
“And then there's the easy one, which is to refer to the vehicle manufacturer’s specified lift points, make sure that you're doing it by the book, the way that the original OEM had intended,” he said.
That sometimes requires adapters for vehicles like Teslas or the new Corvette, Wiederschall said.
“Read the [lift] owner's manual,” Wiederschall stressed. “At BendPak, we have a very complete owner's manual. A lot of people just think of it as an installation guide, but really, it's a full operation guide. It tells you how to properly use the lift.”
The owner’s manual also provides troubleshooting tips and maintenance guides.
“Familiarizing yourself with the manual, and not just setting it into a pile is a great place to start,” Wiederschall said. “It's critical information. When you're talking about lifting vehicles between 2 and 3 tons, in many cases, this is this is literally life or death. You do not want to have that accident.”
Inspecting and Maintaining Lifts
Wiederschall said the first step is to buy lift equipment with the ALI Gold label, which means it has been independently tested and certified to meet a safety standard beyond its rated capacity.
“[ALI] really are quite thorough in making sure that lifts are built to withstand a lot more than what we generally throw at them,” Wiederschall said. “Not that we would ever advise exceeding what a lift rated capacity is, but it goes through a very thorough set of standards to qualify for that ALI Gold label.”
ALI also has its Check360 program, which offers certified inspectors to perform annual inspections of lift equipment.
“However, if you look at that manual, you'll see that maintenance shouldn't just be done once a year,” Wiederschall said. “There are a lot of components that require weekly, monthly or quarterly maintenance. And we need to not forget about that stuff.”
For example, two- and four-post lifts are equalized and leveled with systems that use large, braided steel cables. Those cables can stretch and lead to an imbalance, which, in a worst-case scenario, could cause a vehicle drop or damage to the lift.
“We work in an industry maintaining vehicles, and you'd be amazed how many people are surprised that they have to maintain their equipment too,” Wiederschall said.
ALI’s website, autolift.org, has a lot of information on how to find, inspect and maintain ALI-certified lift equipment.
BendPak also offers manuals, troubleshooting guides, how-to videos and connections to customer support representatives on its website, www.bendpak.com.
Ergonomically-Optimized Equipment
Comfort when working equals operator health, Wiederschall said.
“Generally speaking, on a conventional two-post lift that has a 69-inch arm rise, if I'm working underneath, I'm kind of bent over, my legs are more than shoulder width apart. I'm kind of stretching and straining and in a tight environment. And I'm sore after not too long,” Wiederschall said. “That's something that I think a lot of us are all too familiar with.”
BendPak is addressing that with a new line of lifts that have a 75.5-inch rise. Once pads, adapters and other equipment are added, “even somebody my size and taller can be comfortable working underneath a vehicle,” he said.
Why is that important?
“No more back strain. You're more comfortable, you're happier,” Wiederschall said.
That leads to increased morale and productivity.
“Don't be the shop owner that has a guy that's breaking his back. Now you're dealing with worker's comp, and you're dealing with a guy out of the office because he's hurt,” he said.
BendPak recently introduced a new line of what it calls the Ergochair, creeper seats designed for automotive technicians. The Ergochair ERGO-RS is a convertible creeper and shop seat with multiple locking positions to provide back support no matter what position the technician is working in.
“Say you're working on a rocker panel, on a vehicle that's on a lower mid-rise lift, and you're putting panels into place, or whatever the task may be. You can be at a lower position and still be supported so that you're not in this half sit-up position and straining your back, neck, knees,” Wiederschall said.
“Our bodies take a lot of hits,” he said. “Anything that we can do to mitigate that and make it a little bit more comfortable is good for everybody. It's not just good for the technician. It's good for the shop. it's good for productivity. There's no downside.”
Attracting Talent with Top Equipment
Strandberg said it sounded like offering better equipment to technicians could be a recruiting and retention tool.
“Absolutely. A little bit goes a long way,” Wiederschall said.
He said he works with shop owners who are understandably concerned with their bottom lines, but investing in better equipment can be a net positive in the long run.
“When you look at the big picture, it really becomes a no brainer to make these investments, because what really comes down to a couple hundred dollars on the front end can save you thousands, if not tens of thousands, down the road,” Wiederschall said.
Considering the Best Lift for Your Shop
When looking at lift equipment, shop owners should consider the kind of vehicles they will be repairing. EVs, for instance, have special requirements due to their unibody construction.
“Lift points are moving further and further outward,” Wiederschall said. “Being on the right lift point and holding that lift point is critical.”
BendPak's Octa-Flex lift.
At the 2024 SEMA Show, BendPak showed its EV12DPS lift, the flagship lift in its new Octa-Flex line, featuring eight arms to allow technicians to safely work on EV and ICE vehicles. The system provides 360 degrees of locking coverage, to mitigate the risk of a weight shift causing a lift arm to kick out.
In other cases, frame-engaging lifts may also be a better fit than a two- or four-post lift.
“There are frame-engaging lifts that are mid-rise or full-rise that might better suit what you're doing specifically,” Wiederschall said.
“Oftentimes the right solution is to be a little simpler and go with something that's small and frame-engaging, or a low-rise scissor option, because that gets the job done and it does so effectively, affordably and safely,” he added.
BendPak representatives are available to help shop owners find the right lift.
“They're going to ask you questions. Are you a collision center? Are you general repair? Where are you located? Are you in Montana, where most of your business is going to be large four-by-fours? Are you in Los Angeles, where you're doing a lot of EVs and smaller sedans and coupes? How tall are your ceilings? What floor space do you have? What are you allocating for your bays? Those are all things that our team are going to work with you on,” Wiederschall said.
A lot of shop owners overestimate the lift capacity they need, he said. Working with a representative can save them money.
“I've seen a lot of people thinking, ‘Most of the vehicles I work on are 8,000 pounds, I better get a 12,000-pound lift so that I have an adequate safety factor,’” Wiederschall said.
“You're actually getting into a different style lift,” he said. “A 12,000-pound capacity lift is designed more for trucks. That means the arms are thicker. That means it's not going to clear some of the lower-profile vehicles that you're trying to work on.”
The ALI certification means the safety factor has already been considered, he added.
Asked for his final advice for shop owners, Wiederschall said, “Do your homework.”
“I get that you're busy. But when it comes to making these decisions, I see sometimes they'll look at the catalog, and they'll say, ‘Well, that's a cheap one. Let's just do that,’” he said.
“Do not shop that way. Take some time. Do a little research,” he said.
Wiederschall recommended looking at the three lifts in a given category to compare differences. “Is one helping you more than the other? Is one giving you the opportunity to be more versatile than the other?” he said.
“Make sure that you're getting the most out of the equipment,” Wiederschall concluded. “Make sure that you're looking at equipment that's going to be a benefit to you in the long run.”
Abby Andrews