Product Review: New EZ Loader is a Game-Changer for Countertop Installers and Shops
Photos Courtesy Patton Productions
Ever since granite countertops were introduced to the market in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and up until recently, getting large islands installed in residential kitchens has been an industry problem and is often a safety issue.
The EZ Installation Cart with the new EZ Loader is a combo designed by Louwrens Mulder, and is a game-changer for countertop fabricators and installers. According to Mulder, “This device solves several shop and installation issues, making installs safer, and making it easier to move large tops, and especially, installing large island tops. It’s designed to reduce the injuries so common with loading, unloading, and installing large pieces of stone.”
Louwrens has been an inventor and engineer for decades. He designed and built a number of products for various industries in South Africa and in the USA. In South Africa, he designed and built the first Hydraulic Reset Agricultural Ripper for the farming industry. For South Africa’s Gold and Platinum underground mines, he designed and built Knocked Down Scraper Scoops, Rail Carts and Mechanical Roof support systems.
In 2011, Mulder developed and, along with BB Industries, introduced the Tomahawk Stone Splitter to stone companies in the USA, still in use by many stone companies, today.
In everything Mulder builds, he says he always applies the golden rule of design: keep it simple. Make it durable, inexpensive to fabricate and easy to operate. And that is exactly what he accomplished with his latest invention: the EZ Loader (for use in combination with the EZ Installation Cart).
“I designed the EZ Installation Cart first, and introduced it to the stone industry at the 2020 TISE show. The cart provided a simple solution to a common problem- transferring stone into a jobsite. Still, I realized something was missing. About a year ago I began working on a design for another simple device for loading and unloading stone from a transport cart, to the EZ Cart. I designed it to work with the EZ Cart, and together they make one system that eliminates the need to manually lift heavy stone in the shop, and on the jobsite,” Mulder recalls.
Every countertop shop owner, as well as every installer, understands what a challenge it is to transfer, lift, load or install heavy pieces of stone, especially islands. Usually, there are no cranes and forklifts on jobsites, and sometimes there’s a limited number of people to get an island from the Transfer Rack or A-frame into the kitchen – let alone get it transferred off the truck or trailer.
“The EZ Loader, along with the EZ Installation Cart, not only reduces back and other injuries, it reduces the number of installers needed to safely transport a large piece of stone into a kitchen space. The EZ Loader used in tandem with the EZ Cart means less chance of injury from lifting heavy stone on the jobsite,” said Mulder.
“The process of using this equipment to move stone from the shop to the jobsite is simple. For example, say you are preparing to install an island. Most shops have a forklift equipped with a stone lifter, like a Wood’s Powr Lifter or a boom equipped with an Abaco Clamp. You would use the devices you have available in your shop to load the island onto the EZ Loader, and strap it down for transport.
“Once onsite, slide and transfer the Island with the EZ Loader onto the EZ Installation Cart – with my patent-pending roller system it takes very little effort to move the island to the EZ Cart (See photo above). We also offer a transfer ramp to move the cart from your trailer or truck into the jobsite.
“Then, roll the EZ Installation Cart with the island into the jobsite or kitchen; raise the cart up to cabinet level and slide and roll the island onto the support cabinets. Just two people can handle virtually any installation.”
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Starting at the shop: loading a large island top from EZ Installation Cart to a transport cart.
Below, Left: Transferring a large island top from a transport cart to the EZ Installation Cart, can almost effortlessly be done by one person.
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The roller system on the EZ Loader is designed to slide the heaviest top effortlessly off the transport cart and onto the EZ Installation cart. Mulder: “I’ve designed the EZ Combo to work on simple principles: no electricity, battery power or compressor is needed.” |
Some of the Issues and Problems the EZ Loader Solves:
Workers lifting large islands with just suction cups, hand devices or panel carriers is a well-known cause of injury among stone workers. Some of the many issues and problems are:
- Back and shoulder injuries. In most cases an island is just too big or heavy to be easily positioned with brute force. Regardless, the job has to get done, somehow the island has to be lifted and installed. Using body muscle alone, the stone gets maneuvered two, three, four times or more, and then you hear – “I think I just hurt my back, man!” and then, the next morning the boss asking, “Where is my lead installer?”
“Sorry, sir – he injured his back yesterday and he is going to the doctor (or at the ER, or in the hospital with a ruptured disk or torn muscles).”
- Sidelining your install crew for a day, a week or a month while they heal; and the next thing you know you also have to.
- Pull your shop guys to help with a big island install, causing a bottleneck in production and…
- Job delays and changed schedules in addition to…
- Insurance claims, increased expenses, and sometimes permanently sidelining your lead installer, and forcing you to…
- Search for the strongest guy available. But no matter how strong the installer is or how well-trained, sooner or later he is going to say to himself, “Enough is enough!” and then your shop and the industry is losing another great and experienced employee.
With any or all of these all-too common scenarios, shops will experience increased cost, lose valuable workers and production time, resulting in lower profit margins.
Improving Installation Tech
The countertop industry has grown tremendously in the past decade in terms of technology and high-tech innovations. Many well-designed transport and carrying devices are available, but onsite material handling is still mainly done by hand and muscle power.
The EZ Installation Cart and EZ Loader are manually operated, but because of their simplicity and effectiveness, they require very little physical effort at all. These innovations designed by Mulder make a monster island installation a breeze; what once took several men hours of straining, literally back-breaking effort can now be done with two workers, safely, and in a fraction of the time.
Mulder: “One of the main purposes driving my stone industry inventions is to make installations easier on the guys who do some of the most physically demanding, and often most dangerous work in the industry. So many great installers and stone workers have had to retire early or find a less physical line of work, due to injury and burnout. I’ve seen this scenario played out in our own countertop company, Stone World Tennessee.”
Mulder added, “I’ve designed the EZ Combo to work on simple principles: no electricity, battery power or compressor is needed. Less than 50 pounds of force – the push of one finger – transfers any size island from a Hercules Transfer Rack or A-Frame onto the EZ Installation Cart. When I have demonstrated these at trade shows, people are surprised at how easy they are to use, and instantly see how it can benefit their shop.”
For more information, visit https://www.bbindustriesllc.com/ez-cart-loader.html.
Watch a demo and operation video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CjHfIdiCyA&t=3s.