Software for the yard running trailer-mounted lifts.

A trailer-mounted lift is the unit a rental yard reaches for when a job needs height but not weight — a tree crew, a sign tech, or a facilities hand who has to get one person and a few tools up and over an obstacle. It tows behind a pickup, so a customer can often fetch it without a flatbed or a CDL driver, and it parks on its own outriggers to do its work. That convenience is also what makes it tricky to run as a fleet: the unit moves every day or two, the battery pack lives or dies on whether the last renter recharged it, and the trailer half takes road abuse the boom never sees. EquipFlow handles trailer-mounted lifts the way the yard that built it handles its own — 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 trailer-mounted lifts, 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.

Trailer-mounted lifts are low-cost to rent and easy to abuse, which is a hard combination to keep profitable. The margin is thin enough that one unbilled standby week or one missed damage charge erases the job. Two things leak money here: a battery pack that comes back dead and goes out dead again, costing the next renter a shift and the yard a refund, and a trailer that loses a light or a coupler on the road and turns into a claim. Both get caught only if the return inspection actually happens and lands on the rental record with photos. When dispatch, billing, maintenance, and inspection all read from one unit record, the dispatcher quotes the right daily rate, the mechanic charges the battery and services on real hours, and the bookkeeper closes the month without rebuilding what happened from memory.

Trailer-Mounted Lift 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.

Platform height

34-51ft

Horizontal working outreach

18-32ft

Platform (lift) capacity

500lb

Up-and-over height

15-22ft

Gross machine weight

3150-4800lb

Standard power source

24V DC battery (4 x 6V); optional gas engine

How EquipFlow handles trailer-mounted lifts on the dispatch board.

A trailer-mounted lift is towed, not trucked, so dispatch tracks it differently than a unit that needs a flatbed and a CDL driver. The handy part is that a customer can often hitch it themselves behind a pickup; the trap is letting one leave on a hitch and harness that were never checked. The dispatch board confirms the coupler, safety chains, and light-harness condition on the rental record before the unit rolls, because a unit that loses its lights on the highway is a liability the yard owns. Drop-off versus customer-tow is a field on the rental, so the dispatcher knows whether a driver and trailer are tied up or free. Because these units move every day or two on property-maintenance routes, the board surfaces a double-booking the moment two jobs want the same unit in the same window, not at the gate.

Billing trailer-mounted lifts — MSA, standby, and site-level tax.

Trailer-mounted lifts rent by the day, the week, and the month far more than by the hour, and the daily rate is where contract pricing matters. When an account is on a master agreement, the negotiated rate lives as an override on the customer record per equipment class, so every towable-lift rental created for that account applies the right rate without the dispatcher holding a price sheet in their head. Standby fits here too: a unit parked on a multi-week facilities job, idle on a rain day or between phases but still on the customer's site, bills standby on a line separate from the active days. Delivery and pickup charges ride the same invoice when the yard tows it. Tax jurisdiction is set on the delivery-site record, so a unit working across more than one taxing district gets the right rate per site, and the invoice posts to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on trailer-mounted lifts.

Preventive maintenance on a trailer-mounted lift runs off the hour meter, not the calendar, because one unit on a steady tree-service route logs real time while a yard spare sits for weeks. The hour reading is captured on the return inspection and posts to the unit record, and the maintenance module advances the service clock from that reading. The battery pack is the heart of the machine and the first thing PM watches: the cells, the charger, terminal corrosion, and electrolyte on flooded packs all decide whether the next renter gets a full shift out of it. Hydraulics on the boom and the outrigger legs come next, along with the tires, bearings, and lights on the trailer itself, which an over-the-road component schedule does not always cover. Work orders, parts, and meter history live on the unit record, which is also where a damage charge from a return inspection turns into a repair ticket.

Trailer-Mounted Lift return inspections.

Two rhythms apply. The operator runs a pre-use check each day the unit is on rent, which is the customer's responsibility while it is in their hands, and a thorough inspection comes due annually. The yard's own control is the return inspection: before a trailer-mounted lift comes off rent, the driver or the customer runs a mobile-web checklist on a phone — no app to install — records the hour-meter reading, and attaches required photos that cannot be skipped. The checklist is built for this machine: outrigger pads and leg condition, boom and platform wear, the battery state, and the trailer side most renters ignore — coupler, safety chains, tires, and the light harness. The return inspection ties to the rental record before the unit goes back in the yard, so a dispute over a cracked light or a bent outrigger has a photo and a timestamp behind it.

Common trailer-mounted lift classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for trailer-mounted lifts.

The sections below are the EquipFlow modules that matter most when running trailer-mounted lifts — each links to the full feature detail.

Operator guides for running trailer-mounted lifts.

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

• Aerial Lift Inspection Requirements →
• Boom Lift vs Scissor Lift for Renters →
• Renting Out Aerial Lifts Safely →
• Reducing Equipment Downtime in a Rental Yard →

What you give up running trailer-mounted lifts in EquipFlow.

EquipFlow is a web app, so the return inspection needs a signal to load. On a job with no coverage the customer cannot complete the mobile inspection on site; most yards run it at the yard on return, so the photos and hour reading land a little later than ideal. There is no built-in telematics or charger integration today, so battery state of charge is not pulled automatically — it is recorded by eye at the return inspection. And the rate logic is built around the daily, weekly, and contract pricing a rental yard actually runs; a yard with an unusual billing structure should bring it to the demo so it can be scoped honestly rather than assumed.