Heavy-Duty & Fleet Lift Installation

A heavy-duty lift is not a bigger car lift. The slab, the power, the air supply, and the bay all change as capacity climbs, and they don't scale in a straight line. Challenger's 18,000 lb 4018XFX calls for a 6-inch, 4,000 PSI slab, while its 50,000 and 60,000 lb 4-posts call for 5 inches at 3,000 PSI. The only safe answer comes from the spec sheet for the exact model, so that's where every heavy-duty job starts.

These lifts are built for fleet maintenance, municipal garages, truck dealerships, and shops that service box trucks, transit buses, refuse trucks, and other Class 6 to 8 vehicles. We sell Atlas and Challenger heavy-duty lifts, and we handle the whole job: site check, concrete, power and air planning, delivery, installation, testing, and training. See all of our lift installation services.

What We Check Before a Heavy-Duty Install

• Slab: thickness, PSI, reinforcement, and cure, checked against the model you're buying. If the slab falls short, we pour new pads to spec.
• Power: single-phase or three-phase, voltage, and amperage. Several of the largest 4-posts only run on three-phase, which many buildings don't have at the bay.
• Shop air: most heavy-duty 4-posts lock and release on compressed air. No air means no lock engagement, so the compressor and lines have to reach the lift.
• Ceiling and bay: overall height at full rise, runway length for your longest wheelbase, column spacing, and room to drive on straight.
• Delivery: these lifts ship by freight, weigh thousands of pounds, and the carrier won't unload them. We coordinate offloading and staging so the lift lands where it's going in.

Heavy-Duty 2-Post Lifts, 12,000 to 20,000 lbs

Heavy-duty 2-posts cover pickups, cargo and delivery vans, box trucks, and fleet vehicles that outgrow a 10,000 lb lift. Ceiling height is where they surprise people: most need 13 to 15 feet, and some need more.

Challenger also builds the CL16 (16,000 lbs, designed for cargo-van-style vehicles) and the CL20 (20,000 lbs, with an air-actuated lock release, so it needs shop air at the lift). The E15 and LE12 call for at least 4 inches of reinforced concrete at 3,500 PSI, cured 28 days; the Atlas 15K models call for 4 inches at 3,000 PSI. We confirm the exact numbers for your model before we drill.

Heavy-Duty 4-Post Lifts, 18,000 to 60,000 lbs

Drive-on runway lifts for buses, box trucks, refuse trucks, fire apparatus, and other vehicles you can't put on arms. Above 30,000 lbs the spec sheet changes fast. Concrete figures for the 4018XFX, 44050, and 44060 below are from each model's installation manual, which is stricter than Challenger's one-page spec sheets; final requirements always come from the manual for the exact model and your site.

• Three-phase: the 44040, 44050, and 44060 need it, and the 15 HP motor on the 50K and 60K models draws about 42 amps at 230V. The 44030 is the only lift in that series that runs on single-phase.
• Runway length: extended (E) and extra-long (X) versions take longer wheelbases. On the 44030, max wheelbase goes from 230 inches standard to 290 (E) and 350 (X).
• Hydraulic fill: the 44050 and 44060 ship dry and take about 20 gallons of AW-32 at setup.
• Indoors only: the motors aren't sealed, so these lifts go in an enclosed bay.

Challenger's 4030 series (30,000 lbs) adds an anti-sway device and fold-down approach ramps with jack rails, and the 4030 and 44030AR come as alignment lifts. Rolling jacks, ramp kits, and internal air line kits are sold separately for most heavy-duty 4-posts, and we install them with the lift.

Mobile Column Lifts

Mobile column lifts pick a vehicle up by its wheels, with one column at each wheel, so the bay stays open when they're not in use. Challenger's are battery powered and wireless:

• CLMM-5000: 5,000 lbs per column, sold as a set of 4.
• CLHM-125XF: 12,500 lbs per column, with extended forks standard.
• CLHM-190 and CLHM-190W: 19,000 lbs per column; the W is the wide-base version.
• CLHM-MR20, MR30, and MR40: 20,000 to 40,000 lbs per pair, each pair lifting a front or rear axle.

The CLHM carriages adjust for wheel diameters from 5 to 24.5 inches, and you can run up to 8 columns for multi-axle vehicles. Atlas battery-powered mobile column systems are rated from 66,000 to 111,000 lbs.

Mobile columns don't go in like a 2-post or a 4-post. Setup means checking the floor where they'll run, setting up the columns and their wireless controls, testing them under load, and training your techs on operation.

How a Heavy-Duty Install Goes

Concrete inspection or new pads first, then anchoring, column and runway setting, hydraulic and electrical connections, air line plumbing, lock calibration, and cable or chain adjustment. Every lift is cycled, run through its lock positions, and tested under load before we leave, and your team gets a walkthrough on operation and maintenance. The documentation stays with the lift.

Already running heavy-duty lifts? We inspect and repair them too; see lift inspection and repair.