JLG Industries has announced an enhanced version of its ET500J towable boom lift, delivering improved off-road maneuverability and automated stabilizer leveling to the towable aerial platform segment. Towable boom lifts-typically towed behind a pickup truck or light commercial vehicle-offer a cost-effective alternative to self-propelled booms for landscaping, tree care, signage installation, and general facilities maintenance. However, traditional towable booms are restricted to firm, level ground with clear outrigger setup, limiting their deployment in soft-soil applications such as orchards, golf courses, and new residential subdivisions where the turf has not yet been compacted by construction traffic.
The enhanced ET500J addresses this limitation with a "Five-Roller Suspension System" integrated into the trailer chassis. The engineering breakthrough is the "Progressive Terrain Loading." Each of the four corner rollers and the central roller is fitted with an independent torsion axle that distributes the machine's weight more evenly across the contact patch when the trailer is towed across uneven ground. This distributes the axle load across a wider footprint, reducing ground pressure by 20 percent and allowing the unit to traverse soft turf without rutting or sinking.
The second innovation is the "Closed-Loop Stabilizer Auto-Level" system. Traditional towable booms use manual screw-jack outriggers that require the operator to exit the platform, level a bubble indicator, and re-extend the jacks individually-an iterative process that consumes 10 to 15 minutes per setup. The enhanced ET500J integrates "Hydraulic Stabilizer Jacks" with "Dual-Axis MEMS Inclinometers" mounted on the chassis. At the touch of a button, the ECU autonomously extends all four hydraulic jacks differentially, reading the chassis tilt in real-time and adjusting the individual jack strokes to achieve level within 0.5 degrees. The system also features "Ground-Pressure Verification"-a strain gauge on each jack foot measures the actual bearing pressure, and the ECU alerts the operator if any individual jack is under-loaded (indicating soft ground) before the boom is elevated. This automated leveling reduces setup time from 15 minutes to 90 seconds and eliminates the common operator error of elevating the boom on an unleveled chassis.
