What a Come-Along and a Lever Hoist Are Rated to Do

Why this matters

The number stamped on a puller describes one thing: a straight-line pull, in line with the tool's own axis, produced by a person's hand on the handle the manufacturer put there. Almost nothing about a real job matches that. The handle gets a pipe over it, the pull comes in at an angle because that is where the anchor was, the hooks land on a tip instead of a bowl, and a device marked for pulling ends up holding something over somebody's head. Each of those breaks a different clause of the rating, and none of them make a noise while they are doing it. This card is the pre-use record that separates a tool being used inside its rating from a tool that still has a legible tag and no longer has a meaningful one.

Three tools people call by each other's names

They are rated differently because they were designed for different duties, and the tags say so.

Read the tool's own marking before anything else. If it does not say it is rated for overhead lifting, it is not, and no argument about its ratchet mechanism changes that. A pulling device may be built with a different design factor, a different brake arrangement, or no load-holding brake at all, and none of that is visible from outside.

The four conditions inside the rating

Straight-line pull along the tool's axis. The rating assumes the load acts through the tool from hook to hook. A tool that is cocked, that bears on its frame, or whose hooks cannot swing to align is carrying bending in a body designed for tension.

Hooks free to align, loaded in the bowl. A hook is designed to bear in the saddle. A load carried on the tip is off the designed bearing area and puts bending into the hook section, which reduces what the hook will carry. The number by which it reduces belongs to the hook or tool manufacturer, and ASME B30.10 addresses hook removal criteria in the edition your jurisdiction, contract or employer programme has adopted. Take the derate from that document. Do not take it from a shop rule of thumb, and do not take it from this article.

Hand force on the handle the tool was built with. The lever length is part of the rating. Torque at the mechanism is force multiplied by the length of the arm it acts on, so doubling the arm doubles the torque delivered into the tool for the same hand force. There is no warning cue for this, because the operator's own effort feels lighter, not heavier.

The load is what the tag says. Everything above assumes you know the weight. Where you do not, that is its own finding and a sibling card covers what it costs; bounding it is a separate procedure with its own card.

The pre-use record, filled in

A crew is pulling a section of pipe into alignment for a joint, using a lever hoist between a structural anchor and the pipe's rigging point. The pull is not vertical and the pipe is supported by other means, so this is a tensioning job rather than a lift. Here is the record they filled in at the tailgate, with the corrections printed as separate lines rather than folded into a conclusion.

Tool markings, read off the tool: lever hoist, rated capacity 3/4 ton (1,500 lb), marked for lifting and pulling. Lever length as marked in the manual: 12 in. Date of last periodic inspection legible on the tag.

Tool as found: a 24 in length of pipe on the lever, left there by the previous crew.

• Designed lever arm: 12 in.
• As-found lever arm: 24 in.
• Torque ratio at the same hand force: 24 / 12 = 2.0.
• Correction applied: the pipe comes off. This is not a derate you can compute your way around, because the tool's rating is not a torque rating you can scale, it is a load rating derived with the designed arm. With the cheater on, the operator has no relationship at all between effort and load, which is the whole reason the arm length is specified.

Load estimate: the pull required to bring the pipe into line was bounded rather than measured, at not more than 900 lb, using the method in the load-bounding card. Written as a bound with one inequality sign, because that is what it is, not as a plus-or-minus figure.

• Bound on required pull: at or below 900 lb.
• Against the rating: 900 / 1,500 = 60% of rated capacity.

Angle of pull: the anchor was not in line with the pipe, so the tool sat about 20 degrees off the axis of the intended movement. The tool's rating is not reduced by that, because the tool still carries the tension along its own axis, and the hooks were free to swing so the tool aligned itself. What it does change is the direction the pipe moves and the size of the side force at the anchor and at the pipe's rigging point, and those are the components that get checked, not the hoist. That distinction is worth carrying: the tool aligns itself and stays in a straight-line pull, while the two things it is hooked to see a force that is not where the plan drew it.

• Correction to the tool's rating for the off-axis geometry: 1.0, because the hooks aligned. Printed, because if the hooks had been captured and unable to swing, this line would not have been 1.0 and the tool would have been carrying bending.
• Anchor and rigging-point check: performed separately against their own ratings and directions.

Hook check: both hooks loaded in the bowl, both latches present and closing, throat opening and twist checked against the manufacturer's criteria and found within them. Neither hook loaded on its tip.

Chain check: load chain runs freely, no twist, no link riding wrong through the sheave, no evidence of a link that has stretched relative to its neighbours.

Result: in service, at 60% of rating, with the cheater removed. If the bound on required pull had come in at or above 1,200 lb, which is 80% of rating, the crew's own rule sends them to a larger tool rather than to a bigger effort, because at that point the bound's own uncertainty is the thing deciding the outcome.

What flips the answer

The tool is holding rather than pulling, and something is under it. A tensioning job becomes a lift the moment the tool is the only thing keeping something from moving toward a person. At that point the overhead-lifting marking governs, the exclusion zone applies, and the tool's brake becomes a load-holding device with all the constraints a sibling card sets out for brakes generally.

The pull is on something with stored energy. A tensioned cable, a sprung pipe, a strapped stack, a spring-loaded assembly. Releasing a puller on stored energy releases the energy too, and the release direction is along the axis you were pulling on. Do not stand in line with the tool, do not stand in line with what it is pulling, and get everyone out of that line before the pawl is touched. Where you cannot establish where the energy will go, the answer is to change the method rather than to stand somewhere else.

The pawl has to be reversed under load. This is the moment lever hoists hurt people, and it is a design feature being used at the edge of its intent: the lever has to be moved into the lowering position while the pack is loaded. Keep your body out of the arc the lever will travel through, keep your face away from the mechanism, and never operate the lever with a body part between the lever and anything solid. If the mechanism will not shift with normal hand force in the lowering direction, stop. Do not add leverage to a mechanism that is refusing to release, because whatever is refusing will let go all at once when it finally does.

The load chain is not the manufacturer's chain. Load chain is a rated component with a design factor, a grade and a heat treatment. Chain from a hardware shelf has none of those and no rating that means anything in a load path. A hoist with a substituted chain is not a hoist with a lower rating, it is a hoist with no rating.

Verifying the tool is still inside its rating

Three checks, and only one of them is about the tool's condition.

Look at the handle before every use and confirm nothing has been added to it. A cheater is the single most common alteration and it is the one that leaves no mark.

Look at where the hooks are bearing after tension comes on, not before. Hooks migrate as the load takes up, and a hook that started in the bowl can end on a tip once the geometry settles. Look from outside the line of pull.

Compare your bound on the load against the rating and write the percentage down. A tool used at 60% has room for the surprise; a tool used at 95% is relying on an estimate being right, and an estimate is the one input in the record that nobody measured.

References

• 29 CFR 1910.184 (slings) and 29 CFR 1926.251 (rigging equipment for material handling) for the rigging in the load path
• ASME B30.21 (lever hoists) and ASME B30.16 (overhead underhung and stationary hoists), in the edition your jurisdiction, contract or employer programme has adopted, which is what gives either force
• ASME B30.10 (hooks), same adoption condition, for hook throat and twist removal criteria
• The tool manufacturer's manual and its markings, which are the governing source for rated capacity, designed lever length and whether the tool is rated for overhead lifting
• See related: What a Chain Fall Tells You Before It Fails; Why a Hoist Brake Is Not a Parking Device; What Rigging a Load of Unknown Weight Actually Costs