Lift Inspections
Lift Safety Inspections
Automotive Lifts pose a serious danger in your shop when they are in need of repair or maintenance. Lifts are heavy equipment. A vehicle can easily fall and crush your service technician or customer with only a split second’s notice. Indeed, every year over 15,000 accidents causing hospitalization or death come from lift related accidents (and this doesn’t count the countless accidents that are handled without involving a hospital or the insurance companies).
In fact, during this last year, we have been called out to service and inspect many failed lifts that either caused damage or were about to. This is a lot more common than you would imagine. Sometimes it doesn’t end with just damaging the vehicle, sometimes it ends with death. A lift inspection is very inexpensive and becomes a miniscule cost when compared to a disaster caused by an accident.
For example:
· A 30 Year-old man sustains life-threatening injuries when a lift with a Ford Escort collapses.
· A 19 Year-old man has his fingers amputated when the vehicle on the lift he was operating tipped while he was adjusting the kick out device.
· A 28 Year-old man died when the lift he was operating failed and the vehicle fell and crushed him.
Here is a small sampling of the accidents listed on this OSHA claims web site: http://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/AccidentSearch.search?acc_keyword=”Auto%20Lift”&keyword_list=on
Lifts fail and cause accidents all the time, and the causes of failure vary. Some lifts fail because of improper installation, improper use by the operator, poor maintenance (yes, lifts require maintenance), and even sometimes poor manufacturing. To keep your shop safer, it becomes imperative to conduct regular safety inspections and maintenance.
Craig Heidenthal, Lift Safety Inspector and Owner of Service Tech
That’s what our Lift Safety Inspector, Craig Heidenthal, does for shops like yours. Craig has over 30 years of automotive service equipment experience and has owned Service Tech for over 20 years. In that time, he has conducted 100’s (maybe over 1000) of safety inspections on vehicle lifts. This experience makes him a true expert in the field.
Craig conducts safety inspections on lifts for very large companies with their own fleets as well as many municipal auto service shops. Craig is also called upon to regularly inspect the vehicle lifts of an underground goldmine in Nevada.
Avoid the disaster that could cost your company $1000’s or $1,000,000’s. Invest in a simple safety inspection at least annually to get the peace of mind you deserve from knowing your lifts are safer for use.
Another important point to mention relates to employee training. Every lift is different, and often your lift operators are not trained well enough to operate the lifts safely. This is a common issue that causes accidents regularly. Service Tech provides operator training to ensure you are keeping your staff safer while operating this heavy equipment. Training can be scheduled as a group, saving you money. This training can be performed at the same time as the inspection too, which saves you more money.
