Made-from-scratch aerial lifts?

February 23, 2005—Zooming around the internet this week was an e-mail showing a homemade towable aerial lift for sale on eBay®. According to the seller, the machine was built from the spare parts of other machines—“Actual boom mechanism sourced from airport de-icing truck. Re-rigged onto custom tractor trailer frame.”

To say the least, reaction from industry professionals was total disbelief. One e-mailer stated, “Nothing surprises me anymore.” Another: “Wow, what else can I say?”

Over the years, I've heard plenty of stories about creative individuals building lifting equipment in their garages. But that was a time when the industry was just getting started. Resourceful people were looking for a better way to do a job. Early machines lacked many of the safety and productivity features we take for granted today.

But as this industry has matured, so have expectations. Buyers expect manufacturers to keep costs low while delivering safe, easy to maintain, and productive equipment. Users expect a level of professionalism associated with the operation of the equipment. And the government and standards organizations set minimum criteria for the manufacture and operation of the equipment.

The next step is self-regulation. As an industry—builders, sellers, buyers, users—we need to set the bar high. Training is crucial. Looking the other way when we see unsafe equipment or practices is unacceptable.

Recently, Skyjack, Guelph, Ontario, has signed on to offer AWPT training out of its Guelph and St. Charles, Ill., facilities. Formed as a not-for-profit subsidiary of the International Powered Access Federation in early 2004, AWPT provides safety training programs for aerial work platform operators. More than 120 centers have been approved to offer AWPT training and testing; Skyjack is the latest equipment manufacturer to do so. The company now has six employees qualified to be AWPT instructors, one of which is the only Senior Instructor in North America not employed by AWPT.

According to Brad Boehler, P.E., product safety manager at Skyjack, the company decided to offer AWPT training for many reasons. “We needed to offer the best training available to as many people as possible,” he said. In addition to the program's success in Europe under IPAF, Boehler said, AWPT training exceeds the requirement of ISO 18878. “It's recognized as a benchmark against which other training is compared,” he said.

Initially Boehler's interest in AWPT was to improve and update Skyjack's own training program with what he learned from his AWPT experience. But when approached about becoming a training center, the company saw a way to expand aerial platform training beyond that related directly to its own products.

“I would have to say, that our old program was as comprehensive, if not more so, than the AWPT's classroom instruction. But the AWPT practical instruction and evaluation is more comprehensive than anything we've ever seen.”

Training and education can only increase awareness among lifting equipment users, perhaps reducing the number of accidents. Let's hope that prospective eBay bidders are cautious about considering the home-crafted aerial lift, which the seller explains, “has no title, registration, warranty, or guarantee,” as if that's a selling point. According to the seller, “This machine is a work in progress.”

That's an understatement.