112 Business View Magazine - April 2016
for over 50 years, and are both safe and efficient.
The scissor lift is the sole product of Hy-Brid Lifts by
Custom Equipment, Inc. “The business was started in
1981 by Steve and Lynn Kissinger,” says Justin Kiss-
inger, the company’s Director of Marketing. “We were
a small welding repair business. Eventually we knew
we needed to develop a product line – welding and
repairing wasn’t going to keep growing the company.”
Kissinger says that his dad had once worked for a firm
that produced lifts and “had some relationship with
that type of product. So, we came out with a “2-in-1”
scissor lift which was used for mausoleums in the
cemetery industry.”
As time went on, it became apparent that, in order for
the company to keep growing further, it would have
to expand its customary market. “The mausoleum in-
dustry is only so big,” Kissinger laments. “Cremation
is getting more popular, so you don’t need the lifts,
as much, anymore. It’s still a good market, but not as
strong as it once was.”
In 2004, Custom Equipment, Inc. decided to break
into the construction industry. But in order for its busi-
ness expansion to succeed, the company had to find
its niche in a sector where scissor lifts had already
been around for years. So the company began man-
ufacturing the HB-1030, a small, ten-foot scissor lift.
“The industry had only known 19 feet and up,” Kiss-
inger explains. “So we came in with a machine that
didn’t go as high as everybody else, but what set us
apart was that we developed a very light-weight prod-
uct. We designed it to be smaller and lighter. We came
in around 1200 pounds; the nearest 19-foot scissor
lift was 2,600 pounds and up.”
Finding that market sweet spot was the key to the
