High Lift JackAll & JackMate Review

Some years back Jody Campbell, our tech editor, and I went out to test several new products that we recently installed on our project CJ. Pushing the products we test, and our rigs, to the limits is part of our job, but sometimes it gets us in hairy positions, which is exactly what happened this fateful day. As we were stretching the CJ’s legs over a small pond and on some car-sized rocks, the Jeep slipped into a “V” crevice and locked itself into place. I pulled out my trusty Hi-Lift jack and extricated the Jeep from its certain rocky tomb, and to make an already long story short, we used the lifting jack to push the vehicle off the rocks, and then drive off of the jack, to get it out. Unknowingly, and maybe a bit too contented with our successful extraction, the lifting jack fell into the pond, and, as the old saying goes; ‘out of site, out of mind’. Inevitably, we forgot our jack in the pond, never to be seen again.

The chronicle you just read, led us to look for alternative manufacturers of off-road lifting jacks, not for any other reason but to investigate other existing and comparable products – hey, it’s what we do. Which brought us to a company called Maasdam, who has been making industrial and farming equipment for years, along with their Jackall high lift jack and the JackMate® jack accessory. We promptly ordered one of each.

Maasdam’s Jackall high lift jack

 Our initial reaction to this jack is that it appeared to have similar construction as other name brand high lift jacks. Assembly was a piece of cake, and we promptly attempted to jack our project Land Cruiser by its reinforced rocker panels only to find that the jack would bind on the main beam, would scrape off layers of paint, and would gouge the steel main-beam at the same time (see picture). In fact, at one point, even a 225-pound person couldn’t apply enough weight on the jack handle to raise the medium-weight rig more than a few inches, clearly not high enough to get a tire off the ground.

After 20 or so minutes of running the jack up and down the mast to scrape off excess paint, we were finally able to get the jack to function well enough to raise the vehicle off the ground. During this garage-based performance, we found – in our opinion – that the amount of downward pressure that needed to be applied to the jack handle, to raise the vehicle was too much, and could become a safety hazard. We also struggled with the ratcheting lever mechanism, which switches the jack from ‘upward’ jacking, to ‘downward’ jacking, which can be relatively common with most high lift jacks, but this system seemed to be slightly worse. One other thing to note is that the jack handle is welded to the jacking mechanism, which for the novice off-roader may not seem all that important. However, I personally (and have seen others do the same), have used the removable handles from other high lift jacks for a variety of uses. We consider the overall performance of the Maasdam Jackall less than par, and conversations with other off road enthusiasts tend to agree.

Maasdam’s JackMate® Jack Accessory

The JackMate® has seen service for years in the fire and rescue industry, the industrial world and more. This ingenious, simple and effective tool can be applied to most high lift jacks and will allow the jack to be transformed into a clamping, crushing, spreading, pulling and winching system.

Over the past few years we’ve used it to straighten bent tie rods, spread steel tubing and clamp various objects. Make no mistake, this is far from the stock ‘top clamp’ that comes with several other high lift jack manufacturers as most are only rated to about 750 pounds. The JackMate® has a working load rating of 4 tons (8,000 pounds), which is plenty for just about anything you can throw at it.

The JackMate also comes with a lifetime warranty, although we sincerely doubt you’ll ever need to make a claim on it. At about $30 you can’t go wrong, and we consider it one of our ‘must have’ tools/accessories.