Car lifts are a big ticket item for most body shop and auto repair service related businesses. As they are such big ticket items there is ample scope for management to cut costs and purchase equipment that is less expensive at the point of purchase without considering the whole life cost of the equipment.

At some point, anything mechanical will break or stop working however good the maintenance schedule. It is important to consider what impacts and implications of a breakdown will have on the end user of the equipment. Once a breakdown has occurred it is sometimes the phrase \’the bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of cheap price is forgotten\’ that springs to mind. This is especially so when a lift is out of action with a line up of customers\’ vehicles waiting to be serviced or repaired.

Unless proper research is done to find out parts stockholding, price and availability of spares before a purchase is made and taken into account, then it may be a shock to find that a part costing a few dollars has to be shipped from somewhere far away. Even worse when the delivery time will be several weeks. In these circumstances a cheap purchase price will be small consolation if the company operating the unit is reliant on their one and only car lift.

I guess these issues aren\’t as bad if you have more than one vehicle lift you may say although the chances are that issues like that would be multiplied by the number of machines operated.

Parts supply isn\’t the only consideration to downtime however. A cheaper price is generally indicative of cheaper quality of components also. Where a more expensive machine may have thicker cables, chains and higher quality bearings money has to be shaved off somewhere.

Machined parts may be supplied with looser tolerance specifications so joints and bearings become sloppy and worn out quicker. Sure these inferior quality parts probably look OK when they are new and still freshly painted but looser tolerance generally means more maintenance and higher overall operating costs once service personnel and call-outs have been factored in.

It could be argued that developing countries offer good products overall and they are cheaper due to lower operating costs. This is to a certain extent a fallacy. Labour costs would be lower in line with local pay and conditions but when it comes to high quality machining upon which your business may depend it is unlikely that developing countries would have invested sufficiently in state of the art modern burning, milling and shaping machines.

Having said all this it boils down in the end to the type and arduousness of the application. If the machine to be operated is in a low volume environment with spare capacity it may be prudent to opt for a lower priced machine. If however the application calls for a heavy duty, robust machine then money invested in a higher quality machine is almost always going to pay dividends in terms of reliability and overall cost of ownership.

Canadawide is a resource for Quality Automotive Equipment in the Automotive and Service Vehicle industry. Canadawide supply only quality Automotive Equipment manufactured in North America from car jacks, wheel balance machines to heavy duty 4 post car lifts.

http://www.cwequip.ca is a resource for Canadawide Automotive Equipment Sales & Service. Canadawide supply only quality vehicle maintenance and lifting equipment manufactured in North America.

Author Bio: Canadawide is a resource for Quality Automotive Equipment in the Automotive and Service Vehicle industry. Canadawide supply only quality Automotive Equipment manufactured in North America from car jacks, wheel balance machines to heavy duty 4 post car lifts.

Category: Automotive
Keywords: car lifts, car jacks, automotive service equipment, vehicle service equipment