ALL HAIL THE RAZERLIFT
Ingenious device eliminates the grunt work of loading and unloading rooftop ladders
Michael Edworthy is eager to get his Ram ProMaster work van back.
Edworthy owns Hank’s Plumbing and Gasfitting in Calgary and his team routinely uses a manual rack to lower and raise their ladders from the roof of a van, sometimes as often as 10 to 20 times a day.
His ProMaster van has been in the hands of Calgary engineer/ inventor Paul Buller. When Buller returns the van to Edworthy it will be equipped with an ingenious device called the RazerLift. At the push of a button, the RazerLift will allow ladders and tubing to automatically lower from the rooftop to the side of the van and back again.
“Operating the manual ladder racks is a big safety concern,” Edworthy says. “Sometimes you have to stand on the bumper, and lots of times people slip and fall.
“Being able to push a button and have the ladders automatically come down (on a rack) will be a huge leap above the industry norm.”
Late in 2017, Edworthy became aware of the RazerLift. After seeing the device in action he was eager to help test the design. His plumbers will provide real-world feedback during beta testing.
Buller’s RazerLift has been almost 10 years in the making. About a decade ago, his family was driving a Volkswagen Passat that couldn’t accommodate a receiver to hold a rear rack to carry their bicycles. Lifting them onto the roof was a chore. So Buller began searching the market for something to make it easier. He came up emptyhanded.
That’s when he became an inventor.
“In my garage, I just Frankensteined a system together, and it worked.”
What he assembled, essentially, was a powerful electric motor mounted to a rooftop cross member. Geared down, the motor slowly operates a cable and pulley to move a pair of arms from above the vehicle to a point at the side. During the lowering procedure, any items mounted to the arms, such as ladders or a cargo box, remain horizontal.
Buller acquired some funding from the Alberta government for early product development and worked with a company to build two test units. He mounted one of the prototype RazerLifts to his vehicle and put a Thule cargo box on top.
“My main focus had initially been the recreational market,” Buller says. “But as I drove around, people driving commercial vehicles would often stop and ask if it could ( be used to carry) their ladders.
“For the commercial side of the equation, it’s all about safety, and I’d like to focus on that.”
Buller is moving forward with the RazerLift. Now working with a small group of directors, he has acquired a grant from Alberta Innovates and some further backing from private investors. He has also received patents in Canada, the U.S. and Europe for his designs and is now working with Calgary’s August Electronics Inc., a contract manufacturer helping to get the RazerLift ready for production.
“We’ve got their design file,” says Mike Layton, business development manager for August Electronics. “We’ll come up with a plan and work with them to get to a point where (the lift) can be manufactured in volume and be a viable product.”
In their 70,000-square-foot facility, August Electronics Inc. will build parts for the lift, such as the circuit board, the box that houses it, and the motor. Some components will be outsourced, but one of Buller’s key points in developing the RazerLift has been to keep the project as locally made-in-Canada as possible (www.razerlift.ca).
“There are a lot of local resources involved in the RazerLift,” Buller says. “One always gets the impression that Calgary is just an oil and gas city, but there are a plethora of excellent resources here (from machinists to welders to electronics developers) that can help take a project from concept to completion.”
RazerLift was shown earlier in March at the 2018 Work Truck Show in Indianapolis, Ind. According to the website for NTEA, The Association for the Work Truck Industry (NTEA. com), the show offers an opportunity for commercial users to see the newest industry products, attend industry-focused training courses, and visit with engineering representatives from hundreds of exhibiting companies.
“RazerLift created a big buzz when we were there,” Buller says. “There’s momentum building and we’ve got serious intent from a dozen distributors stateside and at least half a dozen municipalities that would like to see the lift on their fleets.”
Edworthy of Hank’s Plumbing is looking forward to putting the RazerLift through its paces, as he sees it as a solution to a problem that has existed for a long time.
And Layton at August Electronics says, “At the right cost point, this is certainly a product that will revolutionize that niche in the industry.” Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada. Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or gregwilliams@shaw.ca. Driving.ca