Software for the yard running boom trucks.

A boom truck is the crane a rental yard reaches for when the lift is real but the job does not justify a crawler or a rough-terrain crane on a lowboy. It is a telescoping hydraulic crane mounted on a commercial truck chassis, which means it drives itself to the site on the highway, sets its outriggers, makes the picks, and drives to the next stop — the taxi crane of the fleet. That self-mobility is exactly why a boom truck is its own animal to run: it goes out operated by a certified driver, the rigging and jib have to travel with it, the wire rope and outriggers take a beating, and the hour meter climbs on a unit that may make several short calls in a day. EquipFlow handles boom trucks the way the yard that built it handles cranes — 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 trucks, 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.

A boom truck is a high-value, operated unit, and the money on it leaks in two places at once. The first is standby. Cranes sit when the wind crosses the load chart or a job stalls, and if those idle hours never reach the invoice, the yard eats the cost of a truck and an operator doing nothing. The second is damage. Wire rope, sheaves, hooks, and outriggers are wear items the load rides on, and a return that goes out the gate without that damage caught and charged is a repair the yard quietly absorbs. The hour meter ties maintenance and billing together, 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 rate, the mechanic services against real hours, and the bookkeeper closes the month without rebuilding it from memory.

Boom Truck 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 lift capacity

24-60USt

Main boom length

92-151ft

Telescoping boom sections

4-5sections

Offsettable jib length

26-55ft

Maximum tip height (boom plus jib)

176-206ft

Outrigger spread, fully extended

24-25ft

How EquipFlow handles boom trucks on the dispatch board.

A boom truck is the crane that drives itself to the job, so the dispatch board treats it as a CDL-operated asset that moves on the highway, not a unit waiting on a lowboy. The dispatcher sees which trucks are en route, which are set up on outriggers and making picks, and which are due back, on the same responsive screen at any hour. Two traps run this class. The first is the operator: most boom truck rentals go out operated, so the assignment has to pair a certified operator with the unit, and the board surfaces that pairing at the point of dispatch rather than at the gate. The second is the jib and rigging — a truck sent without the offsettable jib, slings, or load blocks the customer expected is a wasted roll, so the dispatcher confirms the rigging on the rental record before the truck leaves. Same-day taxi-crane calls stack quickly, so the board flags scheduling conflicts before two jobs land on one truck.

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

Boom truck work tends to bill as operated taxi-crane time — portal-to-portal hours with travel and a daily or call minimum — rather than a bare daily rate, and in the oilfield it runs under an MSA. The negotiated rate lives as an override on the customer record per equipment class, so a boom truck rental created for that account applies the right rate automatically without the dispatcher keeping a rate sheet in their head. Wind and weather drive a lot of standby on cranes: when sustained wind pushes past the load chart and the crane has to sit, the dispatcher marks standby and the invoice carries active hours and standby hours as separate lines, no month-end reconstruction. Travel time, operator hours, and rigging add-ons ride the same invoice. Tax jurisdiction is set on the delivery-site record, so a unit that worked across more than one county still bills the right rate per site. Invoices post to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on boom trucks.

Boom truck PM is hour-meter driven, not calendar driven, because a unit running daily taxi-crane calls climbs through an interval while a yard spare sits idle for a season. The hour reading posts when the return inspection records it, and the maintenance module advances the PM clock from that reading so the next service lands against real usage. A boom truck carries two service lives in one unit, and PM has to respect both: the crane upper — hydraulics, the telescoping cylinders, the swing bearing and rotation gearbox, the winch and wire rope — and the truck chassis underneath, with its own engine, brakes, and drivetrain that put it under highway rules. Wire rope, sheaves, hooks, and the load blocks get their own attention because they are wear items the load rides on. Work orders, parts, and meter history live on the unit record, which is also where a damage charge from a return inspection becomes a repair ticket.

Boom Truck return inspections.

Three inspection rhythms apply to a boom truck. The operator runs a pre-shift check every day the crane works, and frequent and periodic wire-rope inspections are required under the crane standard because the rope is what the load hangs on; an annual thorough inspection covers the whole machine. Those are the operator's responsibility while the unit is on rent. The yard's own control is the return inspection. Before a boom truck 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. Boom-truck-specific checks belong here: wire-rope condition for birdcaging, kinks, and broken wires, sheave and hook wear, the hook-block and overhaul ball, outrigger pads and jacks, the jib and its pins, and any hydraulic weep on the boom cylinders. The return inspection ties to the rental record before the truck leaves the customer site, so a damage dispute has photos and a timestamp behind it.

Common boom truck classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for boom trucks.

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

Operator guides for running boom trucks.

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

• DOT Compliance for Equipment Hauling →
• How to Schedule Equipment Deliveries →
• Minimum Rental Periods and Why They Matter →
• Adding a New Equipment Category to Your Yard →

What you give up running boom trucks in EquipFlow.

EquipFlow is a web app, so the return inspection needs a signal to load. On a remote pad with no coverage, the operator cannot finish the mobile inspection at the customer site; most yards run it at the yard on return instead, which means the photos and hour reading land later than ideal. There is no built-in crane telematics or load-chart integration today — engine hours, fault codes, and load-moment data from a manufacturer's portal are not pulled automatically, so the hour meter is captured at return. And the rate logic is built around the operated, MSA-and-standby model the oilfield runs on; a yard with an unusual crane-billing structure should bring it to the demo to be scoped honestly.