Welding & Custom Fabrication

Welding & Custom Fabrication in Central Iowa

When you go looking for a welding shop near me, you usually fall into one of two buckets: somebody who needs a small bracket tacked together, or somebody whose equipment is down hard and needs real structural repair to get back to work. Ames Hydraulics is built for the second group. We’re the Ames, Iowa welding and fabrication shop that farmers, trucking companies, and contractors call when something heavy is cracked, bent, or broken and it has to hold up under load again.

If you’ve already searched for a welding shop near me and gotten a list of places that mostly do railings and fences, you know the problem — most of them won’t touch the heavy stuff. We will. We weld and fabricate on truck and trailer frames, implement equipment, equipment attachments, and aluminum, in both steel and aluminum, every day.

The Repairs We Do

• Cracked truck and trailer frames. A trucking company with a cracked frame can’t just park the rig and wait. We handle truck frame repair and reinforcement so the unit goes back to hauling, not to the scrap line.
• Broken implement tongues. The farmer who snapped the tongue off a plow, cultivator, or planter doesn’t have time to order a whole new implement mid-season. We rebuild and re-weld tongues and hitches so you finish the field.
• Bent and torn attachments. The construction crew with a skid-loader grapple bucket that’s completely bent over knows a new one isn’t cheap. Our equipment welding straightens, reinforces, and rebuilds buckets, grapples, and attachments back to working shape.
• Holed and cracked aluminum. The concrete company with an aluminum belly-dump that’s got a hole in it, or the farmer with a cracked aluminum horse trailer — that’s aluminum welding most shops flat-out refuse. We do it.

If you run equipment, there’s a good chance the repair you’re putting off is one we take on as routine work. That’s the difference between us and the average welding shop near me result.

Steel and Aluminum, Done Right

Plenty of shops can lay a bead on steel. Far fewer can do clean, strong aluminum welding on the parts that actually carry weight — belly dumps, horse trailers, fuel tanks, and tanker bodies. Aluminum is its own animal: it needs the right prep, the right process, and someone who’s done it on real equipment, not just practice coupons. We’ve built that experience over years of metal fabrication work for operators all over Central Iowa, and it’s why aluminum jobs that get turned away elsewhere end up on our bench.

When the original part is too far gone, we don’t just patch it — we fabricate. From custom fabrication of brackets and mounts to full structural rebuilds, we make the piece you need when there’s no part number to order. If you can describe it or hand us the broken one, we can usually build it.

Who We Work With

Our weld repair customers aren’t hobbyists — they’re people whose equipment makes them money. Farmers, trucking companies, concrete and aggregate haulers, construction crews, and fleet operators across Central Iowa. We speak that language, because we work on this equipment all day. We know a down implement in June or a cracked frame on a Monday morning is an emergency, not an errand, and we treat it like one.

One thing to be clear about: we are an in-shop welding and fabrication operation — we do not offer mobile welding. Bring the part or the equipment to us in Ames, or take advantage of our free pickup and delivery within 60 miles, and we’ll get it handled here where we have the tools, the steel, and the room to do it right.

Why Bring It to Ames Hydraulics

A weld is only worth anything if it holds. We build repairs to take the load the part was designed for, whether that’s a trailer frame at highway speed or a planter tongue dragging through hard ground. We give you a price up front before the work starts, we answer the phone when you call, and we turn jobs around fast because we know what downtime costs you.

We’re also more than a welding shop near me — we’re a full hydraulic and equipment shop. So if the cracked frame also has a leaking hydraulic cylinder, or the implement that lost its tongue needs hoses too, we can handle all of it under one roof instead of sending you to three different places.

If you’ve been searching for a welding shop near me that actually takes on heavy truck, trailer, and equipment work — including the aluminum nobody else wants — you’ve found it. Call or text Ames Hydraulics at 515-292-2599, or bring it by 210 Freel Dr, Ames, IA 50010, Monday through Friday, 7AM–5PM. Got something broken? Let’s get it welded back together.