Another Person Needing Help Moving a Press - me!

A few years ago I moved my whole shop including an 8 x10 C&P.
Here is a link to the video. You might pick up some useful ideas.
https://vimeo.com/390226591
Steve Varvaro
SouthpawPrinters.com

Absent any professional rigging services, put the C&P on a pallet, get a pallet jack, and engage a tilt-bed car-mover. They charge by the hour/mile and move heavier things every day. They will winch it up the bed, strap it down, and deliver & unload safely. I’ve used them to move C&Ps and Vandercooks without any problem. (Make sure you get an experienced driver though).

Towing company. Tilt bed as mentioned above.

Towing company. Tilt bed as mentioned above.

I’ve done basically the same number of times. Once the Press is sitting on the pallet jack it never comes off again until it’s at the destination. The difference being for me is I would rent a U-Haul open trailer and winch it up into it using a come along.

I certainly have nothing against hiring out professional movers or help but having had one c&p press dropped and the flywheel smashed into bits I’ve done it myself ever since.

I’ll add that I did rent a moving truck with liftgate once and maybe it was just the type of gate the truck had but ill never do that again. It was difficult to get the pallet jack/press onto the gate because of the lip and it being narrow and it was real sketchy sending it back down. I mean press tied off to the truck so the top heavy machine didn’t topple over when the gate lowered everybody stand way back sketchy.

I too have used a liftgate truck. Yes, liftgates will lean. How we did this was once the press was secured to the pallet we put the press with the pallet jack on the liftgate, lowered the pallet jack to keep things stable, and then two people up in the truck, used a movers strap tied around the press and kept it taught until the tailgate was completely raised and and then one person keeps this tension on the press while the other one moves the press into the truck. . DO NOT ride up with the press! The extra person keeps the process steady.

Using the trailer method sounds like a good idea, however we were moving the entire shop 500 miles, so the truck was the best option, moving one or two pieces of equipment across town could be a lot easier.

IMHO, do -not- use a tilt-bed truck/trailer if at all possible, to many chances for mayhem.

Better is the oft-neglected “drop deck” trailer- instead of tilting, the entire deck drops to road level. I’ve moved a 14x20 Challenge Gordon multiple times on one of these. They can be rented from many equipment companies like Sunbelt, Cresco, United Rentals, etc.

As for a pallet, unless you’re going to bolt the press to the floor, I prefer to bolt it do a skid made out of 4x6 wood beams and leave it on that; it does raise the entire press but then it moves easily with a pallet jack (this is important to some of us).

Oh, and there are two different styles of lift gate, the old with the narrow/steep lip and the new one where the entire platform is flat tilts to the surface. The new style is much safer for moving large items. With any lift gate beware of the actual lifting capacity.