Heavy duty vehicle lift leader Stertil-Koni, known for its award-winning hydraulic bus lifts and truck lifts, has announced that Idaho-based Legacy Classic Trucks – recognized as one of the top vehicle restoration companies in the nation – has selected and is currently using Stertil-Koni heavy duty lifting systems to give new life to historic vehicles.
Recently, Legacy Classic Trucks landed a contract for a multi- year restoration project upgrading 33, 1937 White Motor Company Model 706s tour buses. Each of these 80+-year-old vehicles will be transformed from gas-powered buses into environmentally-friendly hybrid vehicles.
Explained Legacy CEO Winslow Bent, “By updating the buses to an electric hybrid system, they will have a much lower carbon footprint. Adding regenerative braking will charge the batteries during downhill descents.”
Coincidently, this braking process is much like the Active Energy Retrieval System (AERS) of the Stertil-Koni EARTHLIFT – the “green” Mobile Column Lift – chosen by Bent to assist with the refurbishment project. These portable lifts safely support the iconic buses so specially trained technicians can modernize the fleet.
Legacy’s four EARTHLIFTs contribute to this precise work performed at the busy shop where a lot is riding on the finished product. Here’s what’s unique about EARTHLIFT:• Columns made with 98 percent recyclable components with 100 percent recyclable batteries;
- Models and Capacities: ST 1085, 18,500 lbs. or ST 1100, 22,000 lbs.;
- Safe mechanical locking system with overload protection and synchronization
- Powered by AERS, each lift achieves 5 percent more lifting cycles at maximum lifting load, thus providing up to 50 lifting cycles without recharging.
How Bent discovered Stertil-Koni’s EARTHLIFT Mobile Column Lifts is no joke. “Two or three years ago Jay Leno showed me his lifts,” noted Bent. “If I had sucked it up then and spent the money then, I would be ahead of the game. As soon as I went ahead and got the lifts, it was ‘why did I not do this before?’”
Once the Mobile Column Lifts were purchased, Bent and his crew were pleased with the results. “You do heavy work in a transit facility, but in a shop like mine you do heavy and precision work,” said Bent. “The EARTHLIFT is way better than our previous lift. I have expensive trucks, why hoist them on an old immobile two- post? I’m raising vehicles that are irreplaceable.”
Helping to make it all happen were Stertil-Koni’s Westcoast Regional Sales Manager, Ron Reazer and National Sales Manager, Rick Palmer.
Noted Reazer, “ lifting technology leverage our tremendous expertise in reliable hydraulic lifting technology to a whole new arena – the rebuilding of vintage vehicles. Winslow said he has discovered significant time and cost savings with his four new lifts.”
“Normally it takes 10-hours to remove the body from a frame. With the EARTHLIFT it’s faster, safer and even more precise. You can move the lift where you need it. You don’t need to move the vehicle to the lift. You go where the job is. Now we get the same work done in three to four hours.”
He continued, “We got EARTHLIFTs purely for the bus restoration project, but now that they are here we are realizing all the things we can do with them,” he noted. Today, the Legacy crew is able to lift vehicles never before thought possible. Recently, he replaced a tire on a trailer carrying an 8.5-ton military vehicle and completed maintenance on an amphibious WWQII duck boat.
With a long list of future projects, Legacy Custom Trucks plans to build its own larger facility near its currently rented shop, and Bent has already set the plans into motion, “We will be ordering more Stertil-Koni Mobile Column Lifts,” said Bent.