Specialist and awkward lifts
Planned lifts for one-off and out of the ordinary items
A lot of the work on this page arrives the same way. The access is tight, the item is unusual, or the setting is busy, and the job needs thinking through rather than just booking. That call is one we are used to taking.
These are not lifts we treat as routine. They are the ones where the lorry has to be in exactly the right position before anything comes off the bed, where there is one route in and no second attempt, and where the item is a one-off with no obvious lifting points. Pianos out of upstairs rooms. A statue. A sculpture moved across Greater Manchester. A flight simulator. A hoist taken off the side of a building in the city centre with the street half closed.
What makes them work is planning rather than equipment. We go and look, or we work from your photographs, we decide where the vehicle stands and in what order things happen, and then on the day it is dull. Dull is the aim.
The kind of thing we take on
Awkward work we have done
- Pianos lifted in and out through upstairs windows
- Statues, sculptures and public art moved and set on plinths
- Simulators and large single machines into and out of buildings
- Hoists and equipment collected off the side of city centre buildings
- One-off items with no lifting points, slung and packed to suit
- Lifts on restricted and partly closed streets with a traffic plan
- Machines through a single gateway with inches either side
- Items lifted out of tight yards and mill buildings across Manchester
Where the lorry stands decides the job
On an awkward lift, the item is rarely the problem. The problem is getting the vehicle into a position where the lift is safe, and then keeping it there while the load is in the air. Terraced streets, mill yards, courtyards with one arch in, city centre frontages with a bus route outside. Each of those sets where the lorry can be, and everything else follows from that.
So when you email, tell us about the surroundings as well as the item. What the street is like. Whether the ground is solid. Whether anything overhead is in the way. Then tell us what it is, roughly what it weighs and whether it has been moved before. We would rather have too much detail than too little.
Common questions
Awkward lifts, answered
My job does not fit any category. Is it worth asking you?
Yes. We run our own lorries and our own drivers, so we can look at the job on its own terms and plan it properly before the day. Email us with a description and photographs and we will tell you how we would do it.
What counts as a specialist lift?
Anything where the item, the access or the setting is out of the ordinary. A piano out of an upstairs room, a statue, a sculpture, a flight simulator, a hoist off the side of a city centre building, a machine that has to go through one gateway and no other. If you are struggling to describe it in a category, it probably belongs on this page.
Do you have to see it first?
On this kind of work, often yes, and that is deliberate. A site visit before we quote is cheaper for both of us than a wasted day. On smaller one-offs, good photographs and a clear description will usually do it.
How do you price a job nobody has done before?
On the time and the vehicle it will realistically take, including the planning. Once we have seen it or seen the photographs, you get a price for the job as described.
Will you take responsibility for planning the lift?
We can. Where the lift needs a plan, a method statement and a risk assessment in our name rather than yours, that is a contract lift, and we run those too. Tell us which you need when you email, or describe the job and we will tell you which it should be.
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