Power Systems Adjustable Step-Up Box

Bought this for our aspiring scholastic football playing son to use as part of his training program. The goal was to have jump boxes that would cover a range from ~12" to ~24" without breaking the bank. This single, adjustable platform seemed to fit the need. The design is good and solid enough for home use, but the steel tubing is definitely too lightweight for commercial or institutional use. The platform top is sturdy plywood covered in a rubber non-skid surface. The built-in wheels make moving the 50 lb unit easy enough. The basic design is sound, with one noteworthy flaw the bottom of the base is just the painted steel tubing. The result is it will be painted steel on whatever surface you place it on. If that''s a hard surface floor, then both the floor and the bottom of the base will get seriously scratched. It needs some rubber or similar contact pads on the bottom of the base, which can be added following a trip to your local hardware store.

In use, a change in platform height requires two people. The top part weighs about 30 lbs, and changing positions requires that all four legs be unpinned, then the top portion repositioned and held in place to nearly line up all four legs simultaneously, and then re-inserting all four locking pins. Since it takes two and some coordinated effort to make changes, this is probably not a platform well suited for someone who expects to change the height frequently. Still, it has it''s utility for infrequent changes of platform height.

All fastener parts shipped with the platform are thoroughly coated in a machine oil, so unless you degrease the parts first your hands will get well oiled and the assembled unit will retain that distinct machine oil smell, which may be objectionable to some, particularly in the home interior. Assembly took about 15-minutes, with little help from the rather poor and cryptic instructions. It''s fairly simple bolt or nut and bolt assembly. The instructions make no mention of using washers anywhere even though 31 were included (the unit needs 32, so another hardware store buy). If you have a reasonable basic knowledge of mechanical assembly and the required metric wrenches (2 @ 17-mm) you''ll have no problem, but if you don''t it may seem rather daunting.

If those were the only issues, I might give it 3 stars, but serious packaging problems led me to downgrade the rating to 2 stars. The shipped unit weighs close to 60 lb''s. The box is very low density, soft, corrugated cardboard with double banding in two directions. The inner packing is little more than some low density rigid polystyrene foam around the six outer sides. Given the hard steel nature of the parts and their weight, the foam panels inside get shredded. The result is a collection of steel parts sliding and banging into each other and punching on the outer box. When it arrived the outer box had a sizable hole in it and seriously damaged along the edges. It amazes me after the fact that made it with everything intact and only one scratch and ding on the base unit. I would, however, not expect such luck a second time this platform is very poorly packaged, and will probably arrive missing parts, somewhat scratched and dinged, or both.