It was another beautiful day and my family and I wanted to take the boat out on the water for some much needed relaxation and family fun. We got the kids ready, prepared the snacks, grabbed the beverages, gathered all the necessities (towels, sunscreen, life jackets, sunglasses, hats, etc). With 3 kids under 4, this is like a 2 hour process! Then we headed out.

Loaded up the boat, lowered the lift, only to find we were a few inches from floating. You have got to be kidding me!

We tried many options to get the boat off, but nothing worked. But, then we were concerned how we would get the boat back on if we did get it off. A few inch kept us from having an awesome family experience.

Unfortunately, this started happening every year. But it never happened consistently. Some summers we had no problems. Sometimes we would be fine in the Spring, but then late summer, the water level dropped and we barely got our boat off in the fall. Other times, we had to delay getting our boat in the water in the spring, but then were fine late summer into fall.

We paid for extra dock sections to keep us farther out in the water (that was expensive!), tried placing floating devices under the boat (what a pain!)…we just wanted something that worked and that we didn’t have to change all the time. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t find a solution in the market.

Being the engineer that I am, I decided to solve the problem for us. I drafted a concept and started to build the first prototype in a friend’s back yard. I started to receive outside interest form neighbor, which led to other friends…thus Raptor Lifts was born. I didn’t want anyone else to miss out on valuable family time due to an inch. Here we are now, chasing the American Dream.

Jeff T
President