Software for the yard running light towers.

A light tower is the unit a rental yard sends out when work has to keep going after the sun is gone and there is no power to plug into. On an oilfield pad it lights a frac spread through the night; on a paving job it turns a night closure into a workable shift; on a job site it keeps the laydown yard and the equipment visible long after the crew goes home. What makes light towers their own kind of rental is that they earn by sitting still — a tower parked and lit is doing the job — so the same unit can stay on one lease for a month barely moving, then a storm or a season change pulls the whole fleet out at once. EquipFlow runs light towers 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 light towers, 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.

Light towers are low-attention units that quietly leak money, and the leak is rarely dramatic. A tower can sit on a pad for weeks earning a standby or monthly rate that never reaches the invoice, and it can come back with a cracked lens, a bent mast, or a dry tank that nobody catches at the gate, so the yard eats the repair. Because these units run long and unattended, the hour meter climbs in ways no one watches unless it is captured the same way every time — at return, on the inspection, against the rental record. When dispatch, billing, maintenance, and inspection all read from one unit record, the dispatcher quotes the right class and rate, the mechanic services on real runtime, the bookkeeper bills the idle time the customer actually owes, and a damage charge has photos behind it. That single-record discipline is what keeps a quiet, high-idle light tower fleet from running at a loss.

Light Tower 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 mast height

23-25ft

LED fixture wattage (per fixture, 4-fixture array)

290-350W

Total light output (LED, 4 fixtures)

154000-188000lm

Fuel tank capacity

28-51gal

Continuous runtime per fuel tank

48-150hr

Onboard generator output

6-20kW

Wind stability rating (mast deployed)

50-65mph

How EquipFlow handles light towers on the dispatch board.

Light towers rent in clusters, not ones and twos, so the dispatch board treats a job that needs a string of units across a pad as a single set of lines a dispatcher can see and stage together rather than a pile of loose assets. Units go out on a gooseneck or get loaded several to a flatbed, so the board surfaces what is staged, what is on location, and what is due back at any hour. The fuel question is the trap: a metal-halide unit and an LED unit pulled for the same job have very different burn, and a customer expecting a long unattended run on a diesel tower needs the right class, so the dispatcher confirms the unit type on the rental record before the truck leaves. Demand spikes hard at the change of season and after every storm, and the same class double-books across overlapping jobs, so the board flags the conflict at assignment instead of at the gate.

Billing light towers — MSA, standby, and site-level tax.

Light tower demand in the oilfield runs long and mostly idle, so the rental is usually MSA-contracted by the month, and the negotiated rate lives on the customer record per equipment class rather than in a sheet the dispatcher keeps in their head. A tower created for that account picks up the right rate on its own. The billing reality of this class is that the unit earns while it sits — a light tower parked on a pad lighting the work is the job, so standby and idle-but-deployed time is exactly what gets billed, marked by the dispatcher and carried as its own line beside any active or delivery charges without a month-end rebuild. Delivery, pickup, and fuel-fill or refuel charges ride the same invoice. Tax is set on the delivery-site record, so a string of towers split across more than one lease still bills the right rate per site. Invoices post to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on light towers.

Light tower PM is hour-meter driven, because a tower lighting a turnaround can run nearly nonstop and stack hours fast while a yard spare sits dark for months. The hour reading posts when the return inspection records it, and the maintenance module advances the PM clock off that reading so service lands on real runtime, not a calendar guess. The engine-generator set carries the wear on these units — oil, fuel and air filters, coolant, and the generator end — alongside the mast mechanism, the winch and cable, and the fixtures themselves, which age out and need replacement as a maintenance item on the older lamp classes. Work orders, parts, fixture swaps, and meter history live on the unit record, which is also where a damage charge written on a return inspection turns into a repair ticket.

Light Tower return inspections.

Two inspection rhythms apply. The operator-facing daily check while the unit is on rent is the customer's responsibility — fuel level, fluids, mast and outrigger condition, and that the unit is set level and the mast is down before a move. The yard's control is the return inspection. Before a tower 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. The checks that matter on this class are specific: every fixture lit and unbroken, the mast extending and retracting and seating, the winch and cable sound, the outriggers and tongue undamaged, the fuel cap and tank intact, and no diesel weep or generator fault. The return inspection ties to the rental record before the truck leaves the site, so a dispute over a cracked lens or a bent mast has photos and a timestamp behind it.

Common light tower classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for light towers.

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

Operator guides for running light towers.

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

• Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Rental Rate Structure →
• Fuel and Environmental Charges on Rentals →
• How to Forecast Equipment Demand →
• How to Manage Parts Inventory for Repairs →

What you give up running light towers in EquipFlow.

EquipFlow is a web app, so the return inspection needs a signal to load. On a remote lease with no coverage, the driver cannot finish the mobile inspection at the site; most yards run it at the yard on return instead, which means the photos and hour reading land a little later than ideal. There is no built-in telematics or fuel-monitoring integration today, so remote fuel level, run hours, and fault alerts from a tower's own portal are not pulled automatically — the meter is captured at return. And the rate logic is built around the MSA, monthly, and standby model the oilfield runs on; a yard with an unusual lighting-rental structure should bring it to the demo to be scoped honestly.