PRO EAGLE TROLLEY JACK

THE last jack is the trolley jack from Pro Eagle Australia (proeagle.com.au). I’d never heard of one of these units until one of Trent’s clients rolled one out for a repair job on his Cruiser while on our Cape York jaunt. Now don’t compare the Pro Eagle with your normal trolley jack from Autobarn or Supercheap, which I have a couple in my shed. Some (many) years ago, we took one of these trolley jacks on an off-road trip, but they were so difficult to handle they never went on another. The Pro Eagle is a different can of capabilities. Made in the good ol’ US of A, it exudes precision and quality and comes in three different models and lifting capabilities up to three-tonne; I bought the big-un. Priced at just under a grand for this top-of-the-line model, it’s not cheap and if you need a custom mounting kit, or the tool kit (aka, a wheel-nut socket set) you’ll add a few more hundred to the bill. If there is a drawback to the Pro Eagle, it is its weight, with the three-tonne unit I have weighing in at 27kg. The Pro Eagle, though, is designed for off-road work and its big wheels make it easy to use in rough terrain, while its belly plate gives it a huge flat base that doesn’t sink in to sand or mud, even if the wheels tend to. It makes lifting, even the back end of my Patrol or a 2500 Ram, a cinch, and it can slip under an axle even easier than any of my bottle jacks – and lift the vehicle higher. The Pro Eagle comes with a standard eight-inch extension for those vehicles that sit on portals or the like. The lifting and the lowering of the jack, even when fully loaded, is easy and well-controlled with the hydraulics. What is also a great safety point is that, even when it’s at its highest jacking position, it is much more stable than any of the units mentioned earlier. As a relative newcomer to the Aussie market, my survey only turned up a couple of people who have the Pro Eagle jack, but, like me, they are rapt in the unit, its capability and how easy they are to use. Finally, whenever and with whatever jack you are using, make sure you play it safe (see below for safety tips). The last thing you need is a jack slipping and falling and hurting or trapping someone!