Our Process - Shipping Costs and Delivery

February 05, 2021

We at Affordable are dedicated to making sure that you have an easy, stress-free buying experience. In order to help with that, we would like to share some information with you, so that you better understand our process. In this article, we will be going over delivery of our products, and how we provide free shipping.

Shipping Costs

Most of our manufacturers are able to send their products directly to our customers once they receive our order. This method is known as dropshipping, and is the most common method of getting products to customers in our industry. Because of dropshipping, most of our manufacturers include the cost of shipping within their price, saving customers the headache of having additional costs added after they already decide on products to purchase. However, there are still a few manufacturers who do not include their shipping costs into their product pricing, requiring us to do that.

You may notice that some of our prices on inexpensive lifts are higher than our competitors. This is because we add the variable shipping costs to the pricing as an average, so that we do not have to surprise customers with additional shipping costs later.

Receiving Your Product

When your product arrives, if it weighs enough to qualify as freight, it may be necessary for you to own a forklift or a skid steer with forks. Trucking companies that deliver products are not responsible for unloading the customer's product, and cannot allow customers within their trucks, so it is vitally important that the customer be able to unload the products from the trucks themselves. In the case of car lifts, it is necessary to use forklifts or skid steers with forks to unload them. Liftgates, hydraulic lifts attached to trucks to load and unload objects, are not capable of handling the very long dimensions of most unassembled lifts. Most trucks that deliver lifts are flatbeds, making it easy for customers with forklifts to lift the car lifts out of the flatbed from the side.

If you cannot utilize a forklift or skid steer with forks, it will be necessary to use a freight forwarder. This is a service that has your product delivered to a qualifying location that can offload the product, store the product for a limited time, and load the product into your vehicle. This is the best option for customers who want to install their lift in a residential location, but do not own a forklift or similar device to unload their lift from a truck.

Liftgate service is reserved only for lighter freight and products with smaller dimensions. If your product weighs more than 300 pounds and less than 1000 pounds, and also has a square shape, it is probably a good idea to use liftgate service.

Liftgate service incurs an additional fee of $100 for commercial delivery, and $150 for residential delivery, and can be selected at checkout. Freight forwarding does not incur additional fees, since we bundle the cost of this service into our prices.