Pork Lift with 2000-Pound Capacity Tips for maintaining and optimizing your pork-lift to ensure peak performance
Purchasing and maintaining specialty equipment can have a significant impact on your farming and livestock operations. In this article, we will talk about sourcing the right tooling (in this case, a best-in-class lift assist tool for moving pigs) and touch on some best practices for maintaining the Pork Lift by ADA Enterprises.
And before we get started, we intend to be as fair and transparent as possible. We obviously have a bias toward this particular tool because we built it.
But we maintain that our bias is not simply because we have an interest in its success; it’s because we built it specifically to be best in class, and the feedback and performance in real-world use are spectacular. We stand behind our take on this pork lift and hope you might entertain a deeper look at the information contained within this article. Of course, we invite questions and comments and would love to see if it makes sense for your hog operation.
In an agricultural operation, tooling and infrastructure matters
Without question, anything that can be made easier without sacrificing results should be. Anything that can be optimized for efficiency within reason should be. Anything that minimizes injuries to employees and animals must be considered. Any tool that changes the game for the industry should similarly be considered. We believe that the pork lift that we offer is one such piece of tooling that can help swine operations of all sizes run more smoothly and that can help staff maintain health and safety standards for both the livestock and the team.
Why a pork lift is not just a pork lift
The obvious answer as to why a pork lift is not always JUST a pork lift is that you don’t have to only lift pork with it. 55-gallon barrels, heavy liquids, and even diesel fuel can be lifted on a pork lift to help minimize strain on human capital and mitigate injuries in that arena. Of course, we recommend routine maintenance and thoughtful use to ensure that biosecurity can be monitored and safeguarded. Obviously, moving other heavy objects can lead to contamination and just because a tool is good at its job doesn’t mean it’s immune to contamination, etc.
But that’s not all either. This is a purpose-built (but still multi-functional) piece of equipment that easily outperforms other competitor products both on paper and in real-world use cases. Here are the specifications for ADA Enterprises pork lift at the time of this writing:
- 2000 lbs. Winch capacity with three support straps
- Heavy-duty steel framework and a low profile size/shape to optimize for tight areas
- Curved architecture to improve comfort for injured or sick animals
- Flat-resistant foam-filled tires with a 10” diameter that allows for difficult ground surfaces but still offer significant support
- A redundant battery system with a trickle charger and a high-quality battery
- Swivel casters that stabilize the load
The point of the pork lift is that support and capability need not be luxuries. At the price point and with the track record that our lift has – this is a piece that can easily find its way into multiple areas where you prioritize work with sows, other animals, or heavy materials and supplies.
Productivity
The pork lift was actually designed with you in mind. It’s been an interesting path of development, and at the current iteration, it’s been outperforming in the real world. This tool is a productivity boon, indicative of our broader product portfolio, and practical in all senses of the word.
The main value is that you can move expired or collapsed sows with less manpower, with less strain on an injured or sick animal, and less difficulty with the dead weight. The narrow overall footprint of the product makes it easily mobile in every space you’re likely to contend with. And the tall, stable design offers a significant surface area with which to work.
Biosecurity
Biosecurity can be difficult to achieve. It’s a significant advantage, of course, to do so, and in practice, we recommend utilizing separate pork lifts for each area. Because achieving true biosecurity can be so finicky, we even recommend between specific areas of a pork operation and not just in the broader, diversified “ranching” or “livestock” operation.
That it is priced so competitively makes such a concept a real possibility, even if you push heavily towards a siloed use of the lift, to ensure you are less likely to contaminate other areas.
Of course, if you still plan on using the pork lift we offer for other tasks, you can improve the chances of maintaining biosecurity (or rather setting yourself up for a spirited effort at doing so), by implementing a strong cleaning regimen and disinfecting the lift between uses in a neutral space.
Reducing workload and injury
The main goal of the pork lift is that it can help to replace support hands in a smaller operation.
The sweet spot for the pork lift is as a second set of hands or a third set of hands when it may be too difficult to ask for additional help. The battery tender and the strong winch offer commercial quality standards and help to keep it ready when you need it.
The multiple straps offer a significant mechanical advantage in conjunction with the powerful motor, while the finish of the lift makes it easy to maintain so that you don’t become disenchanted with the help it provides.
For those that otherwise don’t have as many concerns for biosecurity, the lift can generally be used without a lot of post-use cleaning or maintenance. For those that need to ensure best practices are maintained, the cleaning regimen is likely to be sustainable.
What’s the point of all of this: You work less and get more done with less risk of injury and without having to call in as many favors. What is the price of this extra set of hands? Very reasonable.
Why this Pork Lift is a best-in-class option
We have made strategic changes over the past implementations of this product – and have improved it on all fronts utilizing feedback and rigorous testing from customers, in-house testing, and with the aim to make this a truly helpful tool, regardless of the rate of use.
But the real answer as to why this tool is considered best in class is because, in actual use, with real customers, and in real-time – it works better than competitor offerings and offers better total value in ownership.
Of course, we cannot verify this through third-party testing – the incidence of use doesn’t allow for such widespread testing. But we can also state: we over-engineered this tool, in every facet of its construction. We tested it with hard-working folks in Iowa and beyond. We iterated on the concept until there were no features or conveniences lacking without making it overpriced.
And because we have received such great feedback from real users, and we continue to sell through our pork lift production, year in and year out – we know we’re doing a lot right with this product.
Can we categorically state that our product is best in class? We can state that we feel confident that our pork lift offers significant value for money, while improving conditions for workers and small operations everywhere. We can also state that our incidence of servicing and repair is generally exceptional – benefiting the consumer in all realistic situations.
Needless to say: we are extremely confident that if you meet with us at an industry event, or have a chance to use our pork lift, we think you will be impressed by its robustness, stability and ease of use. It’s built to make your life easier, and optimized over its full development to ensure that it offers long-term value and significant return on investment.
Important final notes about utilizing a world class pork lift in your Swine Operation
To close – and because we didn’t highlight a ton of maintenance and tips for troubleshooting the pork lift – we’d like to highlight some quick points to get the most out of the lift while maintaining its integrity and best advantages over time. It’s rare that we find repetitive errors or difficulties in using this tool, and so it’s difficult to provide a comprehensive guide about troubleshooting.
We recommend the following:
- Dead weight is particularly difficult to work with. If possible, we recommend using existing support structures and the included support straps to help maintain control of the load while initially lifting it. Alternatively, it’s helpful to have multiple people on hand in such a situation if possible. We still recommend tying off the machine to support structure to ensure stability throughout any lift scenario involving heavy loads
- When moving feed, liquids and other rigid items, we always recommend tying off or otherwise securitizing the load to ensure it cannot easily shift on the platform
- Any load that is nearing capacity should be handled on level ground or with proper footings to ensure stability and mobility of the machine itself over the entire span of the run you will move the load within. In some cases, this may mean having to use planking or platforms to maximize balance. 1000+ pounds can be incredibly unwieldy over poor surface conditions
- You’ll want to check the wheels periodically for debris and clear out any debris to maintain mobility and keep bacterial or mold growth to a minimum. A general sweep with a brush or broom will usually do the trick
- Wiping down the platform after any contact with sick or expired animals is a best practice. A full cleaning can be administered in less than 15-20 minutes generally, and will go a long way towards establishing/maintaining biosecurity
- Positioning any animal to conform to the general shape of the platform is important. The machine is meant to hold weight over its center of gravity – not laterally across the load bearing structure. Having a higher positioning for the animal can help to hold the weight in the proper area and splayed animals can be winched up to reduce further injury by keeping this in mind
- While you should minimize extraneous attachments and anything hanging off of the machine too far, we believe that a stable load is important. If you need to use additional strapping to ensure stability, you should not hesitate to do so. We recommend keeping rope, straps, or chains away from the motor area and away from the wheel areas
- While the machine is rated for 2000 pounds, it does not mean that all loads of that weight are acceptable – the general physics of load balancing need to be in place on a case by case basis
If you are unsure whether the pork lift is a tool that makes sense for your operation, we have a strong team of representatives that can answer questions on the fly for you about use cases with this item.
We would love to talk with you about this product and invite you to explore it further or call to order a pork lift today.