One look at the accident list on OSHA's website will give you a strong sense that bad things can happen when mechanics make a living beneath two tons of automobile.
Dan Johnson, 53, knows the risks, too. He has spent most of his 35-year career managing parts, service and collision operations. Since 2011, he has been the fixed operations director for Larry H. Miller Dealerships -- the 10th-largest U.S.-based group, with 55 stores in 2015.
"If I'm a service manager, the only way I would know that that hoist is on the safety locks would be to walk through the shop and check out every down lever on every hoist."
Locked and lit: Two years ago at NADA, Dan Johnson shared his dream with Rotary Lift. This year, the green light was on display.
His 49 service departments house some 1,300 lifts. During each ascent, untold times each day, a technician raises a car above its working height and then lowers the car until the locks on the lift are engaged. In the process, hydraulic pressure is relieved and the support is shifted to a mechanical, "safety" mode. Most of the time, all is well.
But how can shop bosses quickly make sure everything is the way it should be?
A few years ago, Johnson began to wonder just that.
"If I'm a service manager, the only way I would know that that hoist is on the safety locks would be to walk through the shop and check out every down lever on every hoist," he recalled thinking.
"There's got to be an easier way to know that."
So he set out to find one.
At the 2014 National Automobile Dealers Association convention in New Orleans, Johnson took his concerns to Rotary Lift, the supplier of most Larry H. Miller lifts.
He asked whether there was any way to put a light at the top of a lift to indicate that it's in the locked position. That way, a service manager could simply look up and down a row for peace of mind, rather than check each lift individually.
"I said to Rotary: "We really need your help with this.'"
Rotary engineers in Madison, Ind., went to work on the case. Before long, Rotary shipped a dozen kits to be retrofitted on Miller lifts. Rotary also applied for a patent.
After a few months of testing, Johnson and his service managers gave the devices a thumbs-up.
Now, Miller is gradually retrofitting its existing lifts. More than 100 have had the feature, called LockLight, added. And any new lifts Miller orders come with LockLight. It costs $266, either as a retrofit kit or as an option on new lifts.
Rotary says the light is available on its two-post, four-post and light-duty in-ground models, which range in price from $4,000 to $10,000.
The lesson for dealerships? If you have a good idea, talk to your partners about it, Johnson says.
And the lesson for vendors?
"They can learn from us -- what our needs are, what our challenges are."
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