After being competitors for over 20 years, ARI Hetra and MAHA USA announced their partnership to design, manufacture, and sell heavy duty truck maintenance shop equipment in North America. The flagship product for both companies is the mobile column lift (MCL).
MCLs have become the preferred solution to lift trucks weighing as much as 150,000 lbs with any wheelbase or width. As the name implies, mobile column lifts are easily moved between service bays.
“Together, our companies have tens of thousands of MCLs installed across the continent. Going forward we will be the dominant provider of ball screw based MCLs in North America, all proudly made in the U.S.A. in MAHA’s world-class, ISO 9001:2015 manufacturing facility in Pinckard, Alabama. By combining our manufacturing operations, we expect improved efficiency and we look forward to greater innovation through combined product development efforts as well,” said Juergen Werner, managing director of MAHA USA.
The lifts will be sold under the ARI Hetra brand whose bright “safety green” products are recognized throughout the U.S. and Canada. The nation-wide ARI Sales and Service team will assume responsibility for ongoing support of all MAHA lifts in the market.
MAHA and ARI have more that unites them than divides them. The MCLs of both MAHA USA and ARI Hetra utilize a mechanism for linear motion - a recirculating ball screw. “The recirculating ball screw is truly one of the brilliant inventions of the late 19th century. Ball screw based MCLs last for decades due to nearly zero friction as the lifting mechanism rolls smoothly on hundreds of ball bearings. With no torque or energy wasted on friction, the lifts are eco-friendly, and maintenance consists primarily of biannual lubrication. This solution also avoids dangerous and costly leaks common to hydraulics,” said Gary Hudson, president of ARI Hetra.
“In a way, history repeats itself here as the MCLs of MAHA and ARI both originate from the designs of the same Swiss-German entrepreneur over thirty years ago. Our coming back together was perhaps inevitable. We can think of this as ‘German engineering meets American ingenuity,’” said Hudson.
