Software for the yard running frac tanks.

A frac tank is the rental yard's answer when a pad needs a lot of liquid held in one place — fresh water before a frac, flowback and produced water after it, brine or mud near the rig. It is a big steel box on a trailer with baffles inside, a row of manways, a walkway up top, and drain and dump valves at the bottom. What makes a frac tank hard to run as a fleet is that it does almost nothing visible: it gets set on a pad and sits, sometimes for weeks, while the money quietly runs and the real risk hides inside. The standby hours have to land on the invoice, and what comes back in the tank has to be caught at return. EquipFlow runs frac tanks 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 frac tanks, 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.

Frac tanks are low-effort, long-dwell assets, and that is exactly where a yard leaks money. A tank set on an MSA pad earns nothing extra if the standby days never reach the invoice, and it loses money twice when a tank comes back full of flowback solids or scale that the yard pays to clean without charging it back. The two things that decide profit on a frac tank are time and condition, so both have to be captured the same way every time — standby marked against the rental, condition documented at return with photos. When dispatch, billing, maintenance, and inspection all read from one unit record, the dispatcher knows where every tank is sitting and for how long, the bookkeeper closes the month with the standby days already on the invoice, and a cleaning charge has evidence behind it instead of an argument. That single-record discipline is what turns a yard full of idle steel into a fleet that actually pays.

Frac Tank 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.

Liquid capacity

200-500bbl

Overall length

42-47ft

Overall height

10.4-11.1ft

Empty weight

26000-30000lb

Steel plate thickness

0.1875-0.25in

Manway openings

3-4ea

Drain pipe size

4in

How EquipFlow handles frac tanks on the dispatch board.

A frac tank is a trailered asset that gets spotted and left, so the dispatch board tracks it differently than a powered machine: the unit shows where it was set, which pad it is sitting on, and how long it has been there. The hauling truck and the tank are separate lines, because the same tank often stays on location for weeks while the truck moves on to the next spot. The dispatcher confirms the configuration the customer ordered before the truck rolls — flat-bottom versus V-bottom, insulated versus open, the right manway and valve setup — since the wrong tank type on a pad is a full hauling round trip, and these are heavy single-unit moves. The board surfaces overlapping completion windows so a tank promised to two pads in the same week gets caught at assignment, not at the gate.

Billing frac tanks — MSA, standby, and site-level tax.

Frac tank money is mostly time-on-location, not run hours, so the rate is a daily or weekly rental that starts when the tank is set and runs until it is hauled off. Most oilfield demand is MSA-contracted, so the negotiated rate lives on the customer record per tank class, and a rental created for that account applies it without the dispatcher keeping a rate sheet in their head. The standby case is constant here: a tank sits full or empty on a pad through a frac delay, a permit hold, or a disposal backup, earning a standby rate distinct from active rental, and the dispatcher marks it so the invoice carries both lines. Hauling, set, and pickup charges, plus any cleaning fee, ride the same invoice. Tax jurisdiction is set on the delivery-site record, so a tank that moved between counties bills the right rate per location. Invoices post to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on frac tanks.

A frac tank has no engine, so its service clock is built around the recurring interval the fleet runs for the tank body, valves, gaskets, and interior coating rather than an hour meter. The interval posts and advances when the return inspection records the unit back at the yard, so service is scheduled against real turns through the field, not a calendar guess. The work that matters is unglamorous: reseating or replacing manway and valve gaskets, checking the drain and dump valves for seizing, repacking the trailer wheel bearings and lights for the next haul, touching up or recoating the interior where the lining has worn, and chasing weeps at seams and fittings. Work orders, parts, coating history, and inspection findings live on the unit record, which is also where a residue or damage charge from a return becomes a repair or cleaning ticket.

Frac Tank return inspections.

The control that protects the yard is the return inspection run before the tank comes off rent. The driver works a mobile-web checklist on a phone — no app install — and attaches required photos that cannot be skipped, because with a frac tank the dispute is almost always about what is left inside. The inspector confirms the tank was pumped down and cleaned to the agreed standard, looks for residue, sludge, and scale on the floor and baffles, checks the interior coating for gouges and peeling, verifies every manway and valve gasket sits clean, and documents any dents, seam weeps, or trailer damage. A tank returned wet, coated in flowback solids, or carrying scale becomes a cleaning or remediation charge backed by timestamped photos. Tying the inspection to the rental record before the truck leaves the customer site is what makes that charge stick.

Common frac tank classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for frac tanks.

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

Operator guides for running frac tanks.

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

• Dewatering Pump Rental Guide →
• Equipment Rental for Oilfield Operations →
• How to Bill for Equipment on Standby →
• How to Handle Rush and Emergency Rentals →

What you give up running frac tanks 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 customer site; most yards run it at the yard when the tank comes back, which means the residue and coating photos land later than ideal. There is no automated level or volume telemetry today, so how full a tank is on location is not pulled in — that stays a field observation noted at set and at pickup. And the rate logic is built around the daily, weekly, and standby model the oilfield runs on; a yard that bills frac tanks by volume hauled or on an unusual structure should bring it to the demo to be scoped honestly.