Software for the yard running plate compactors.

A plate compactor is the unit a rental yard turns to when fill has to be tightened down and there is no room for a roller — the bottom of a utility trench, the base under a paver patio, the shoulder of a fresh asphalt patch. It is small, it is cheap to rent, and it goes out by the dozen, which is exactly why a plate fleet is hard to run cleanly. The units are easy to lose track of, easy to walk off a job, and easy to send back cracked or caked in concrete because nobody checked them at the gate. The machine itself is a vibration tool shaking itself apart every minute it runs. EquipFlow handles plate compactors the way the yard that built it handles them — 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 plate compactors, 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.

Plate compactors are low-dollar, high-volume, high-churn units, and that mix is where a yard quietly bleeds. A single plate does not earn much, so the margin lives in the count: keeping every unit accounted for, returned in working order, and charged for the standby days it sat idle on a pad. A plate that walks off a job is gone if nothing ties it to a customer and a site. A plate that comes back gouged or full of cured asphalt is a repair the yard eats unless the damage was caught and charged at return. When dispatch, billing, maintenance, and inspection all read from one unit record, the counter rents at the right rate, the mechanic services the exciter against real hours, and the bookkeeper closes the month without rebuilding a swarm of small tickets from memory. That single-record discipline is what makes a large plate fleet pay.

Plate Compactor 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.

Operating weight

110-2,600lb

Plate / working width

12-24in

Centrifugal force

2,700-12,400lbf

Vibration frequency

69-100Hz

Engine power

3.5-13hp

Compaction depth (granular soil)

8-20in

Travel speed (advance)

75-100ft/min

How EquipFlow handles plate compactors on the dispatch board.

Plate compactors are the opposite of a marquee asset on the dispatch board: they are small, they go out by the handful, and they are easy to lose track of among the big iron. EquipFlow keeps every unit on its own line so a dispatcher can see which plates are on rent, which are dry-rented out on a customer's own pickup, and which are due back, on the same responsive screen at any hour. The trap with plates is the accessory: a water-fed asphalt unit dispatched without its sprinkler bar or water tank is useless on the patch, so the dispatcher confirms the configuration on the rental record before it leaves. Because plates are cheap to walk off with, the board ties each unit to a customer and a site, which is the first place a yard looks when a count comes up short.

Billing plate compactors — MSA, standby, and site-level tax.

Plate compactors usually rent by the day or the week rather than the hour, and many go out dry-rented as a small-tools line on a larger ticket. The rate still comes off the customer record, not a sheet the counter keeps in their head, so an MSA-contracted account gets its negotiated plate rate applied automatically on every rental. When a plate sits idle on a pad between backfill stages — waiting on pipe to be set, on inspection, on the next lift — standby is billed separate from active days; the dispatcher marks standby and the invoice carries both lines without a month-end reconstruction. Delivery, pickup, and any accessory charges ride the same invoice. Tax jurisdiction is set on the delivery-site record, so a plate that worked across more than one county gets the right rate per site. Invoices post to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on plate compactors.

A plate compactor lives a brutal life — every running minute is vibration trying to shake the machine apart — so its preventive maintenance is hour-meter driven where a meter is fitted, not calendar driven. The reading is captured on the return inspection and posts to the unit record, and the maintenance module advances the service clock from there. The heart of the machine is the exciter: an eccentric weight spinning in an oil-filled housing, and that exciter oil and its bearings are the service items that decide whether a plate lasts a season or grenades on a job. PM also leans on drive-belt condition, the wet clutch, engine service on the small gas or diesel powerplant, and the vibration isolators between the engine deck and the base. 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.

Plate Compactor return inspections.

Two checks apply. The operator-facing one is a pre-use look the customer owns while the plate is on rent — oil level, belt, and a clear base plate before each start. The yard's own control is the return inspection: before a plate comes off rent, the driver or counter runs a mobile-web checklist on a phone, no app install, records the hour reading where a meter is fitted, and attaches required photos that cannot be skipped. Plate-specific checks belong here. Is the base plate cracked or gouged from compacting over rock or rebar. Is the unit caked in cured asphalt or concrete that hides damage and stops the next renter cold. On a water-fed plate, are the tank and sprinkler bar present and unbroken. The inspection ties to the rental record before the unit is accepted back, so a dispute over damage has photos and a timestamp behind it.

Common plate compactor classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for plate compactors.

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

Operator guides for running plate compactors.

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

• Compaction Equipment Rental Guide →
• Asset Tagging for Rental Fleets →
• Handling Lost or Stolen Rental Equipment →
• Reducing Rental Equipment Theft →

What you give up running plate compactors in EquipFlow.

EquipFlow is a web app, so the return inspection needs a signal to load. On a remote pad with no coverage, the counter cannot complete the mobile inspection in the field; most yards run it at the gate on return instead, which means the photos land a little later than ideal. Not every plate carries an hour meter, so on units without one the service clock leans on rental days rather than true run time, and the operator pre-use check stays the customer's responsibility. There is no built-in telematics today — these are small engines without portals to pull from. And the rate logic is built around the day, week, and standby model the rental counter runs on; a yard with an unusual billing structure should bring it to the demo to be scoped honestly.