I’ve seen plenty of machine moving videos showing machinery moves with a pallet jack or skates but they all start with a machine flat on the floor. Any ideas on how to get a heavy machine off a pallet that’s about 8” thick? It’s heavy. About 4000 lbs.
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"On the cheap", in zero extra space, and with no complex lifting gear?
Dead-easy, actually. I had less that eight inches, too.
All I had to do was class the entire pallet as "expendable". It's only WOOD, after all. More of it is literally "growing on trees" all the time.
Sawzalled a well adjacent a planned liftng point, Cut-way enough wood to get a jack into place, 'downhole". Lifted the 10EE the merest skosh, installed a machinery skate.
On to the next. The height you have? ONE stubby bottle jack can fit. Or a common garage "trolley jack" can be run into a canal cut for it. No need of costlier "toe" jacks. I have a matched pair of those NOW - compact 5-tonners - but did not THEN.
Once the 10EE was fully stable on three machinery skates - which it lives atop, yet today?
Sawzalled the REST of the pallet to flinders and dragged the scrap wood away, one piece at a time.
If you break anything? Machinery, fingernail, skin, or even a
sweat?
You got impatient and rushed a tedious, but dirt-simple tasking as can actually be done with not even the jack. Wedges, pry bars, and shims work, too. Just more slowly.
Plan your cuts. Add stacked shims when you must. Toppling it is not in the plan.
But incrementally demolishing the pallet from underneath rather than trying to
save it is all you need to do to keep the task cheap and safe.
How much risky lift or tilt above the un-stressed pallet do you need?
Tenth of an inch or less. Pry-bar range if you have no jack. MUCH less if you don't mind driving a few of the cut-up wood scraps out with hammer-blows.
You wanted an excuse to own a decent Sawzall, anyway, right?