A workshop-based mobile jack is essential to any decent farm ‘shop. Always expensive when new, versions from different brands aren’t necessarily the same…

Whether it’s lifting or moving stuff, a worthwhile trolley jack will deliver a powerful lift to a decent height. It’ll also give fine-grained control of both lift and drop, be easy to move around on a hard surface and be intrinsically safe. But how does a buyer know that a given unit does all that? To see what’s what we checked the abilities of three high capacity units, all available on the UK market and offering lift heights over 0.6m.
Makes and models are the Airpress 10/920 Jumbo Jack, the Compac 8T-HC and the Winntec Y42 1000; the last is distributed over here by SIP.

Getting a grip

Handles of these jacks differ in shape and size, but all are involved in lowering. On the Compac you lift and turn its ring-type handle to lower the saddle, a two-step operation which delivers safety and excellent control. The bad news is that the Compac’s lowering is the slowest in the group, a snag which could be sidestepped if the maker added a secondary fast lower control.

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