Software for the yard running mobile cranes.

A mobile crane is the unit a rental yard reaches for when the load is too heavy or too high for anything else on the lot, and the job needs reach without a permanent tower. The carrier drives itself to the pad or the jobsite, sets up on outriggers, and makes the pick, then breaks down and rolls to the next call. That self-contained reach is exactly what makes a crane hard to run as a fleet: it is its own oversize transport, it sits idle on a job for days waiting for a pick window, it carries the heaviest inspection and operator-certification burden of anything in the yard, and the wear items are expensive when they go. EquipFlow handles cranes the way the yard that built it handles its heavy iron — 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 mobile 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.

Cranes are high-value, high-standby, high-liability units, and that mix is where a rental yard either makes its margin or loses it. A crane parked on an MSA pad earns nothing extra if the standby hours never reach the invoice, and it bleeds money if a return goes out the gate with wire-rope or boom damage uncaught and uncharged. The hour meter is the spine of both service and billing, 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 from one unit record, the dispatcher quotes the right rate and the right transport, the mechanic services against real hours, and the bookkeeper closes the month without rebuilding what happened from memory. That single-record discipline is what keeps a heavy, regulated, slow-cycling crane fleet from running on guesswork.

Mobile 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.

Max rated lifting capacity

50-150t

Max main (telescopic) boom length

38-62m

Max counterweight (ballast)

22.5-45t

Carrier/superstructure engine power

349-536hp

Max road travel speed

80-85km/h

Number of carrier axles

3-5axles

How EquipFlow handles mobile cranes on the dispatch board.

A mobile crane is its own transport, so dispatch is really two questions on one record: which unit goes, and how it gets there legally. The carrier drives to site, but the counterweight, fly jib, and extra ballast often follow on a separate truck, and an oversize load needs permits and sometimes escorts before the gate opens. The dispatch board treats each crane as a line on the driver-by-hour view and flags whether it travels self-propelled or rides a trailer. The trap is the bare-rental versus operated decision: a crane sent bare with no certified operator when the customer expected one is a stalled job, so the dispatcher confirms the rental terms on the record before assignment. Because a single class gets double-booked during overlapping pick windows, the board surfaces the conflict at assignment, not at the curb.

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

Crane work in the oilfield runs on MSA terms, so the negotiated rate lives on the customer record per equipment class, and any rental created for that account picks it up without the dispatcher minding a rate sheet. Cranes earn most of their idle time: a unit set up on a pad waits days for the pick window through weather holds and rig delays, and those standby hours bill at a rate separate from active lift hours. The dispatcher marks standby and the invoice carries both lines, plus mobilization and demobilization, permit and escort pass-through, and any operator hours when the rental is operated rather than bare. Tax jurisdiction is set on the delivery-site record, so a crane that worked across more than one county still gets the right rate per site. Invoices post to the accounting system on close.

Maintenance on mobile cranes.

Crane PM is hour-meter driven, not calendar driven, because a unit on a long turnaround burns an interval in weeks while a spare sits a season between picks. The hour reading posts when the return inspection records it, and the maintenance module advances the PM clock from that reading so service falls against real use. Cranes carry wear items a forklift never sees: wire rope and the hoist drum, the swing bearing and slew ring, boom telescoping sections and wear pads, the load-moment system, and the outrigger and hydraulic circuits that hold the whole lift. Any overload event the rated-capacity limiter logs while the crane was on rent is part of the service story. Work orders, parts, and meter history live on the unit record, which is also where a damage finding from a return inspection becomes a repair ticket.

Mobile Crane return inspections.

Cranes carry the heaviest inspection burden in the fleet, and the rhythms stack. The operator-facing pre-shift check is a daily requirement under the crane standard and the manufacturer manuals, the frequent periodic check runs on a tighter schedule than most gear, and the thorough annual is mandatory and documented. Those operator and periodic checks are the customer's responsibility while the unit is on rent. 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 with no app to install, captures the hour-meter reading, and attaches required photos that cannot be skipped. Crane-specific checks belong here: wire rope condition and end fittings, hook and safety latch, boom and lattice for contact damage, outrigger pads and floats, and the rated-capacity limiter. The inspection ties to the rental record before the truck leaves, so a damage dispute has photos and a timestamp behind it.

Common mobile crane classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for mobile cranes.

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

Operator guides for running mobile 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 mobile 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, and most yards run it at the yard on return instead, which lands the photos and hour reading later than ideal. There is no built-in telematics integration today, so overload events, fault codes, and engine hours from a manufacturer's own crane portal are not pulled automatically — the hour meter is captured at return. The software is not a lift planner or a load-chart engine; it tracks the rental, not the rigging. And the rate logic is built around the MSA-and-standby model the oilfield runs on, so an unusual billing structure should come to the demo to be scoped honestly.