FLOE, installed by us
Boat Lifts
Vertical, pontoon, tritoon and personal watercraft lifts sized to your boat and your depth. Installed and serviced on ten Twin Cities lakes since 1998.
The lift is the cheapest insurance on your shoreline
Every lake we service except Lake Josephine has invasive mussels in it. A boat left in the water collects them on the hull, the outdrive and the trim tabs, and by August you’re scraping. A boat on a lift sits above the water line and there’s nothing to scrape, which is the whole argument and it’s the same argument on every one of these lakes.
The second argument is the one people find out the hard way. When a storm comes through, the boats that end up upside down are the boats that were floating. We’ve flipped pontoons, recovered lifts, and once separated a float plane from its lift on White Bear after it went over. A boat carried clear of the water on a properly sized lift is a boat that’s still there on Monday.
Start with the boat loaded, then the water
Start with what the boat weighs on the day you use it, not what it weighs empty on a brochure. FLOE asks that the loaded total stays under 85 percent of the rated capacity, so weigh it the way you actually run it and add about 20 percent on top. FLOE's own example is a pontoon with a dry weight of 2,800 pounds that goes past 4,000 loaded once fuel, batteries, gear, water toys and passengers are aboard. Sizing off the trailer sticker is the single thing owners get wrong on their own, and it’s the expensive one to get wrong.
Depth comes next, and on the phone it’s usually the first thing we ask, because it decides more of the specification than capacity does. Optimum across the range is 26 to 66". A lift handles about six and a half feet of water without leg extensions and about 8 feet with them, and a Deep Water Leg Kit takes the optimum to 74 to 114". Depth also sets the bunks at the 3 foot mark. On White Bear the right answer changes street by street, which is why we ask for an address rather than a lake.
Only then does the hull pick the family. A runabout, a fishing boat or a wakeboard boat goes on a vertical lift, which runs from 1,600 to 10,000 pounds. Anything on tubes goes on a pontoon lift. A third tube changes the frame rather than the machine: FLOE builds a tritoon lift on its P frame, three to four feet longer than a standard lift with bunks to match, usually a VSD 6500 or 8000 P. Personal watercraft have their own three models from 1,300 to 2,600 pounds, on the watercraft lifts page. If a canopy is in the plan, say so here, because the lift model sets which canopy sizes exist.
The case we push back on is buying to the boat you have now when a bigger boat is coming. On the pontoon models the ceiling isn’t only the total: the VSD 6500 is rated 3,250 pounds per main beam and the 8000 is rated 4,000 pounds, and neither beam may be exceeded on its own even when the total is inside the rating. A lift that’s right this year and 80 percent right next spring is a lift you buy twice. If a new boat is in the plan, tell us before you order rather than after it arrives.
The four lift types
Pontoon Lifts are the most common lift on our lakes and the one we install most often. Tritoon Lifts are built on FLOE’s longer P frame for three tubes, usually a VSD 6500 or 8000 P rather than a 5000. Vertical Boat Lifts take runabouts, fishing boats, wake and surf boats, with bunks that adjust in 1/16" increments. PWC Jet Ski Lifts come single and two place, and with a canopy on top nobody has to cover anything by hand again.
Which one you need is decided by the loaded weight of the boat rather than by the hull, and FLOE asks that the total stays under 85 percent of the rated capacity. Tell us the boat and how you actually use it and we’ll give you the model.
Vertical Boat Lifts, Pontoon Lifts, Tritoon Lifts and PWC Jet Ski Lifts
Vertical Boat Lifts
Runabouts, fishing boats, wake and surf boats. Bunks set in 1/16".
Pontoon Lifts
The most common lift on our lakes, and the one we install most often.
Tritoon Lifts
FLOE P frames, built longer for three tubes. Usually a VSD 6500 or 8000 P.
PWC Jet Ski Lifts
Single and dual skis. Add a canopy and nobody covers anything again.
Design your lift and see it
Choose the lift, the capacity, the canopy and the guide-ins and watch it come together. Design A Lift™ is FLOE's own configurator and it opens in its own tab. Bring the result back to us with your address and we’ll tell you whether it’s right for your depth, because that’s the part a configurator can’t know.
It opens in a new tab, so this page stays exactly where you left it. Bring the design back to us and we’ll price it against your shoreline.
What goes on it
The access handle and the access step are the two that change how a lift is used every day: they’re what you hold and where you put your foot stepping across to a boat sitting up on the bunks. The rest of the dock hardware fits alongside.
What we fit as standard, and why
Aluminum pulleys and stainless cable rather than the plastic pulleys and galvanized cable most of the market uses. We see those replaced around year four. Ours run closer to 20 years. On a lift you’ll cycle a thousand times a season, that difference is the entire cost of ownership.
Questions we actually get asked
I know what boat I have. Which of the 4 lifts is that?
A runabout, fishing boat or wakeboard boat goes on a vertical lift. Anything on tubes goes on a pontoon lift, whether it has two tubes or three. Personal watercraft have their own three models. That’s the category settled, which is the easy half. What we still need from you is the loaded weight and the depth at the end of your dock, because those two pick the model.
Why do you list tritoon lifts separately if it’s the same lift?
Because that’s the phrase tritoon owners type, and burying the answer inside the pontoon page would only send them somewhere else. There’s no tritoon specific lift and there are no tritoon bunks. What changes is the frame length: FLOE builds a P configuration three to four feet longer, usually a VSD 6500 P or 8000 P, with the bunks lengthened to match. Everything else about the job, the depth and the install, is the pontoon lift conversation.
What’s the first thing you ask when somebody calls about a lift?
How deep the water is at the end of your dock, in spring and again in September. Weight picks the model, but depth decides whether it needs leg extensions, a shallow operating setup or a deep water leg kit, and depth sets the bunks at the 3 foot mark. On White Bear we know which addresses need which, and that isn’t something anyone reads off a specification sheet.
Which lift do you install most on these lakes?
Pontoon lifts, by a distance. Pontoons, runabouts and personal watercraft are the three most common installs on Forest Lake. Big Marine is a pontoon lake, more pontoons than wakeboard boats, and Lake Olson runs to pontoons and paddleboards. Lake Jane is the outlier: it has a ski jump, and the ski and wakeboard boats there sit on lifts wearing MAXIS™ canopies.
I have a pontoon and two jet skis. Is that one lift or three?
Separate lifts, and that’s what Blake runs on his own dock: an 8,000 pound pontoon lift, a lift for the wakeboard boat, a two place V-2602 and two single place V-1600s. The V-2602 holds two craft at staggered heights, so one can go in the water without moving the other. Two singles is the other way to do it. What decides it on your shoreline is your dock layout, so ask.
What are Perfect Park™, Pro-Park and Precision-Park?
FLOE's three guide-in systems. They line the boat up on the bunks as you drive on, instead of leaving you to place it by eye every time. Perfect Park™ is the one we fit under the surf boats on all three Forest Lake basins and on the largest install we’ve done. Which of the three suits you is a question at quote, because it depends on the boat and how you come in.
Does it matter which lake I am on?
Yes, mostly through depth and access. On White Bear we fit leg extensions at some addresses and a shallow operating lift at others, and it changes street by street. Reshanau can be 8 feet deep 24 feet out, so nothing there resembles a shallow Forest Lake shoreline. On Lake Owasso our barge reaches shore on every job, which is unique in the territory and it cuts the hours.
Is there a lift you will not sell me?
Anything at the cheap end of the market. We carried a lower priced line from another manufacturer in 2018 and 2019, and roughly half the people who bought one told us within 2 seasons that the dock felt wobbly or the lift didn’t work right. We dropped it in 2020 and went exclusively FLOE, which doesn’t build an entry level product. It means fewer options and a longer conversation about which one fits, and it’s why there’s no cheap lift on this site.
Start with the boat loaded, and we will do the rest
Tell us the boat, the motor and everything you leave on board, and we will size the lift against the loaded weight rather than the brochure weight.
Get your lift quoted (651) 260-6185
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