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MADISON, Ind. — Rotary Lift is offering a new mobile column lift that can be used in the school bus market: the Wireless Mach 4.

Company officials said that the lift does away with cords and cables, which can get in technicians' way, slow lift setup and are vulnerable to damage that can leave a lift unusable.                                              

Each Wireless Mach 4 column is powered by batteries and communicates with the other columns wirelessly. As a result, technicians no longer have to worry about knocking the lift out of service by running over the cords or getting one hooked on a bumper. The Wireless Mach 4 also reduces trip hazards.

"The lift is a tool that technicians use to get the vehicle into position to do their real job: bus maintenance and repair," explained Doug Spiller, Rotary Lift heavy duty product manager. "Making the lift as fast and easy to use as possible lets technicians get to work more quickly, which improves overall shop productivity and drastically reduces vehicle downtime. Our time and motion studies have shown that Wireless Mach 4 provides a productivity improvement of greater than 30 percent over similar lifts, saving an organization more than $7,600 in labor costs annually."

Technicians using Wireless Mach 4 can make one trip around the lift at the beginning of a shift to turn it on and configure it, and then they can spend the rest of the day concentrating on vehicle maintenance and repair, officials said.

Technicians can operate the entire lift using the patent-pending control panel on any of the columns. The panel features an intuitive graphic layout of the column setup, onboard diagnostics, easy-to-read LEDs and one-touch controls.

Wireless Mach 4 is available in sets of four or six columns. Each column has a rated lifting capacity of 18,000 lbs. and is powered by two deep-cycle marine batteries. Lifting and lowering of all columns is automatically synchronized. Wireless Mach 4 can raise a vehicle 70 inches in 78 seconds. The lift can be used anywhere in the shop — including wash bays — as well as outside.

Wireless Mach 4 lifts are equipped with backup communication cables that can be used in place of the wireless system with the flip of a switch. The wireless system can also be retrofitted to existing Mach 4 mobile column lifts.

Moreover, Wireless Mach 4 has locking mechanisms every 3 inches and a lower-to-lock function. Its easily adjustable forks can handle a wide range of wheels without bulky adapter sleeves. Optional extended forks are available for supporting inboard tires on dual-wheeled axles.

Rotary Lift's Wireless Mach 4 mobile column lift has been third-party tested by ETL and ALI certified to meet ANSI safety and performance standards, according to company officials.