The lightweight material lift is the workhorse of 21st-century worksites. The more common type resembles a hybrid of a forklift and a sack truck, and replaces both as the kind of lifting equipment most often found in warehouses.

Also known as a load lifter, it’s valued for doing the work of the larger type of lifting equipment while taking up little more aisle space than the smaller one, freeing up room best reserved for inventory.

The other type of material lift is more readily described as a telescoping arm on wheels, giving much of the benefits of the first but adding reach. Allowing it to move out of warehouses and into smaller building sites, where lifting equipment able to haul materials or even contractors onto ceilings and rooftops can be time-saving devices.

Both types of lifting equipment rely on lightweight but rigid frames to resist flexing, while a payload is supported on a pair of widely-spaced forks. Foot and hand pumps, or a system of pulleys, elevate the forks on rollers along the lift’s frame, and its cargo with it.

The forks accept several types of accessories from platforms to extensions up to a boom with a suspended winch, multiplying the lift’s utility while leaving other kinds of lifting equipment almost redundant. Some lifts with a telescoping arm go further by including the option of attaching an articulating one, transforming it into a lightweight crane.

Though one might be tempted to look for a Lego sticker, the lightweight material lift remains a child of its times: little more than a footpump and a steel or aluminum frame is needed to move smartphones, netbooks, tablets and other fragile boxloads of conspicuously compact consumption.

Other than saving space, it’s the degree of fine control from a piece of lifting equipment that lets its operator stand within inches of a payload that keeps the material lift in warehousemens’ and contractors’ sights. And building sites.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.