Compared to a poor soul lugging 70 pound bundles of roofing shingles up a ladder...

One of the many roof loading hoists I've made

And, using one hand to grasp rungs and, the other to steady the bundle on his shoulder then, dismounting to the roof's slanted surface from the side of a ladder, powered roof loading hoists are a dream.

I'm sure they have saved lives and plenty of falls and injuries. They do the heavy lifting. All the roofers have to do is load the hoist with shingles on the ground and "catch" them at the top.

Crew Exhaustion and Safety

Besides the obvious safety concerns while loading the roof, the main difference between hoisting shingles and lugging them is the exhaustion level of the crew which plays out over the course of the day.

Roofing crews usually assign a couple junior members to do the lugging while the others carry out other tasks. The incredibly hard work these luggers do renders them relatively useless by the end of the day which puts pressure on the other crew members to take up the slack. This results in stuff not getting done right or missed altogether.

Exhausted people on a slanted surface high in the air is not a safe situation - therefore a liability.

Hoist fastened to lowest ladder rung. Big mistake!

Options

So, the options are to spend $2,000 for a commercial hoist which are available at roofing suppliers or, search the internet for a cheaper alternative. I chose internet and here's how that went:

The first ‘alternative’ to a commercial hoist I can remember running across is this guy: perfectflyer.com/roofinghoist.htm. I went through all the youtube videos I could find relating to homemade roofing hoists and I got to tell ya there are some creative solutions out there.

Eventually I went back to the perfectflyer.com site. I went through his website and watched all his videos and then built a hoist. I did not use his plans I just figured out what I needed without the plans. Turns out there are some, let’s say, limitations with his ‘design’.

A good example is fastening the hoist directly to the bottom rung of the ladder. I did it and soon learned there wasn’t a good way to secure the hoist – it kept shifting and moving. I tried using rubber to ‘make–up’ the gaps around the rung and that didn’t work either. The other problem with attaching the hoist parallel with the ladder rungs is the resulting offset of the hoist pulley.

When the hoist is not centered at the bottom of the ladder, the hoist wire will roll onto itself and unroll in a fashion that is bumpy and uneven. It jerks the trolly on its way up. Not good.

This site documents some of the hoist ideas I attempted, the failures and successes, my efforts to improve upon each one and, offers a step by step guide to building one for yourself.