Software for the yard running boom truck cranes.

A boom truck crane is the unit a yard sends when a job needs real lifting reach but does not want a crawler or a rough-terrain crane parked on site for days. It drives itself to the work on a commercial chassis, sets its outriggers, and makes the pick — a rooftop air handler, a wellhead package, a run of structural steel, a utility transformer — then rolls to the next site. That mobility is also what makes it hard to run as fleet inventory. Most boom truck cranes leave operated, so a single rental ties together the crane, a certified operator, a carrier driver, and the rigging the pick requires. The hour meter climbs on the upper while the chassis racks up road miles. EquipFlow runs boom truck cranes the way the yard that built it does — dispatch, billing, maintenance, and return inspection on one record per unit.

Built inside Rental King, right now.

Rental King is a heavy-equipment rental yard in Odessa and Midland, TX. They run boom truck cranes, manlifts, forklifts, light towers, generators, compressors, and water trucks on MSA contracts through the Permian Basin — 24/7, oilfield pace. EquipFlow was designed and first deployed inside that yard. Every feature was tested against their live operation before it shipped. The product runs there today.

Boom truck cranes are high-revenue, high-liability units, and both edges cut at the invoice and the safety file. A crane on an MSA pad earns nothing extra when standby hours sit rigged through a weather hold and never reach the bill, and it earns the yard a dispute when a return rolls out the gate with wire-rope or boom damage uncaught and uncharged. The hour meter feeds both the service clock and the rate, so it has to be captured the same way every time — at return, on the inspection, against the rental record. When dispatch, billing, maintenance, and inspection all read one unit record, the dispatcher quotes the right portal-to-portal and standby lines, the mechanic services the upper and the carrier against real hours, and the bookkeeper closes the month without rebuilding the picks from memory. On a crane fleet, that single-record discipline is also the paper trail behind a damage claim.

Boom Truck Crane specs the rental record tracks.

Every number below is a sourced specification range. The render layer is the only path these values reach the page — they live on the unit record, not in a dispatcher's head.

Maximum rated lifting capacity

19-80USt

Maximum main boom length

70-156ft

Maximum tip height, main boom

150-204ft

Maximum jib / boom extension length

44-55ft

Outrigger spread, fully extended

17.5-24.7ft

Carrier engine power

425-500hp

Main hoist single-line pull

11250-17160lb

How EquipFlow handles boom truck cranes on the dispatch board.

A boom truck crane is rarely a bare-rental drop and go. Most leave the yard operated, which means the dispatch board has to schedule the crane, the certified operator, and the carrier driver as one assignment, not three loose lines. The board shows which crane is on a pick, which is rolling to the next site, and which is back at the yard, on the same responsive screen at any hour. The trap is the rigging and the configuration: a crane dispatched without the jib, the right counterweight, the outrigger pads, or the slings and shackles the pick needs is a stalled job, so the dispatcher confirms the load-chart configuration and the rigging on the rental record before the truck pulls out. Because the carrier runs on public roads, the dispatch view also has to respect the driver's hours and the route, not just the lift window.

Billing boom truck cranes — MSA, standby, and site-level tax.

Boom truck crane work bills differently from yard equipment, and the model has to carry it without a spreadsheet rebuild at month-end. Most picks are timed portal to portal, often against a minimum, with operator labor and any overtime as their own lines. In the oilfield, the demand is MSA-contracted, so the negotiated rate override lives on the customer record per equipment class and the dispatcher does not keep a rate sheet in their head. Standby is the line that gets lost most often: when a crane sits rigged on a pad through a weather hold, a permit delay, or a rig that is not ready, those idle hours are billable at a standby rate separate from active lift hours, and the dispatcher marks them so both lines land on the invoice. Mobilization, the certified-operator premium, and tax set by the delivery-site jurisdiction all ride the same invoice, which posts to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on boom truck cranes.

Preventive maintenance on a boom truck crane runs on the hour meter, not the calendar, because a crane on a turnaround stacks hours fast while a yard spare can sit between picks. The hour reading posts when the return inspection records it, and the maintenance module advances the service clock from that reading so the next interval lands on real usage. The crane carries two service domains at once: the upper — boom cylinders, the telescoping circuit, the hoist and swing drives, the wire rope, and the load-moment system — and the carrier underneath it, with its engine, transmission, brakes, and emissions service. Both belong on the unit record, alongside work orders, parts, and meter history. Wire rope gets its own attention here, because a worn or damaged hoist line is a safety item, not a cosmetic one, and a damage charge caught on a return inspection becomes a repair ticket on the same record.

Boom Truck Crane return inspections.

Two inspection rhythms apply, and they do not overlap. While the crane is on rent, the operator runs the pre-shift check before every pick and the frequent in-service checks the standard requires, and an annual thorough inspection sits on top of that — wire rope is inspected on its own rhythm because a single broken-wire pattern can condemn a line. Those operator-facing checks are the customer's responsibility during the rental. The yard's own control is the return inspection: before a crane comes off rent, the driver runs a mobile-web checklist on a phone — no app install — captures the hour-meter reading, and attaches required photos that cannot be skipped. Crane-specific checks matter here: wire-rope condition and the hook block, boom and jib for dents or cracks, outrigger cylinders and pads, the anti-two-block and load-moment switches, and any hydraulic weep. The inspection ties to the rental record before the truck leaves the site, so a damage dispute has photos and a timestamp behind it.

Common boom truck crane classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for boom truck cranes.

The sections below are the EquipFlow modules that matter most when running boom truck cranes — each links to the full feature detail.

Operator guides for running boom truck cranes.

Field-tested playbooks that go deeper on pricing, dispatch, billing, and maintenance for fleets like this.

• Adding a New Equipment Category to Your Yard →
• Aerial Lift Inspection Requirements →
• Air Quality Equipment Rentals →
• Asset Tagging for Rental Fleets →

What you give up running boom truck cranes in EquipFlow.

EquipFlow is a web app, so the return inspection needs a signal to load. On a remote pad with no coverage, the driver cannot finish the mobile inspection at the site; most yards run it at the yard on return instead, so the photos and the hour reading land later than ideal. There is no built-in telematics or load-monitor integration today, so lift counts and fault data from a crane's own controller are not pulled automatically — the hour meter is captured at return. The software also does not manage operator certifications, critical-lift plans, or load-chart math; it tracks the rental, the billing, and the condition, and assumes the crew handles the engineering and the rigging side.