Bushtec Trailer Lift or How I Store My Trailer

[Fontanaman]

Last year I bought a Bushtec trailer. The foot print assumed 4'x8' of precious floor space in my garage.

So with an 11 foot garage ceiling I decided to build a trailer lift. I bought an electric hoist having a 1/4 inch wire rope cable, with a 440/880 lbs lift capacity and mounted it on the garage wall. E-Rigging.com was a good place to buy all the rigging hardware such as swivel pulleys, eye bolts, shackles and cable clamps. All the stuff is rated for lift. I figure the lift table and trailer weighs about 200 pounds so there is 50 pounds on each corner. The lift table hangs from 1/4 wire rope independent of the wire rope doing the lifting thus the electric hoist does not hold the weight unless the lift table is moving up or down. I think it is a bit over designed, by design.

Here is a video of the trailer hoist in operation. Works great and was a fun project.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zXl7LKfKBGI

 

[Bugnatr]

Nice solution Jim.

 

[BkerChuck]

Great and easy solution. Had a boy scout leader when I was young who did something similar with his canoe. He could load and unload it from the roof of the car without help.

 

[gregory]

Nice! I ran out of garage the second Michelle moved in!

 

[JamesW]

Very cool.

 

[Fontanaman]

Thanks for the kinda words. The hard part was mounting 2x4s on the sheet rocked ceiling using lag bolts and hitting center of the support beams while standing on a tall ladder. Mounting a 25 lbs electric hoist on the garage wall, up about 11 feet up was solved by mounting a shelf on the 2x4 used to hold the hoist. I used the shelf to support the hoist while mounting it to the 2x4s.

I am very happy with the results and reclaiming the garage floor space is great.

 

[wingshot]

Awesome.