Software for the yard renting boom and scissor lifts.

Aerial lift rental is inspection-heavy, damage-expensive, and cert-tracked. The ANSI A92.20 series requires daily operator logs, frequent inspections by a competent person, and annual inspections by a qualified person. EquipFlow handles the inspection trail and the damage documentation so a disputed chargeback has evidence behind it.

Aerial-lift rental looks like this.

A typical aerial lift yard runs roughly 60% scissor lifts — electric and rough-terrain, 19 to 50 feet — 30% boom lifts — telescopic and articulating, 30 to 150 feet — and the rest split between manlifts, personnel lifts, and specialty AWP units. The customers are the people who need to work at height: industrial-maintenance contractors at refineries and plants, painters and sign companies, electricians running conduit in warehouses, event setup teams rigging stadiums, tree services, and façade crews.

Rental durations skew multi-week to multi-month. A refinery turnaround keeps a fleet of manlifts on site for three to six weeks. A construction GC runs a scissor lift for the duration of a building project. A sign company rents a 60-foot boom for a week-long install. The equipment moves from one job to the next with a return inspection between every rental.

The two things that separate aerial lift yards from the rest are the ANSI inspection cadence and the damage cost. A basket impact or a boom drop is not a scratch — repairs run $8,000 to $25,000. The documentation trail from pre-rental inspection to daily user log to return inspection is what makes those chargebacks defensible.

Inspections that survive an OSHA visit.

ANSI A92.20 splits inspection responsibility three ways: the operator completes a daily inspection before each use, a competent person performs a frequent inspection on a schedule tied to the unit’s service history, and a qualified person performs an annual inspection. The first and third of those happen in your yard’s operational flow. EquipFlow handles both.

Pre-rental inspection checklists are configured per equipment class in EquipFlow. A telescopic boom checklist requires different line items and photo fields than an electric scissor checklist — platform controls, outrigger pads, boom wear points, battery state-of-charge. Required photo fields cannot be skipped. The driver completes the checklist on a phone before the unit leaves the yard, submits with a signature, and the record is tied to the rental with a timestamp.

The daily user-inspection log lives on the rental record too. The operator opens the mobile-web form from a QR code on the unit — no app install required — and submits each day. The signed log chain is available on the rental record for your records and for any facility safety audit. Full detail at the inspections module page.

Damage and incident tracking.

Boom-lift damage incidents — basket impacts, boom drops, outrigger failures — regularly run $8,000 to $25,000 per repair. The question when a customer disputes the charge is always the same: what did the unit look like when it left, and what did it look like when it came back?

The pre-rental inspection answers the first question; the return inspection answers the second. Both are on the rental record: timestamped photos, completed checklist, driver signature, operator cert on file for the customer account. When a customer calls three weeks after the return to dispute a damage invoice, you send them the inspection record. The photo chain makes the dispute short.

EquipFlow stores the operator-cert documentation on the customer record as well. If an uncertified operator caused the damage, that is on the record alongside the inspection evidence.

MSA and insurance cert tracking.

Most aerial lift customers — industrial contractors, refinery turnaround teams, GCs — operate under a master service agreement. MSA rate overrides live on the customer record in EquipFlow. The dispatcher quotes the right rate without consulting a rate sheet.

Insurance certificate tracking sits on the customer record as metadata. Attach the cert document, set the expiry date, and EquipFlow generates an alert before the cert lapses. For yards that require a current cert before delivering aerial lifts, that alert is the difference between a compliant fleet and an exposed one.

Class-aware billing.

ANSI A92.20 defines four classes of aerial work platforms based on the envelope of platform travel: A1, A3, B1, and B3. Those classes correlate roughly to electric scissors, rough-terrain scissors, articulating booms, and telescopic booms. Each class commands a different daily, weekly, and monthly rate.

Equipment class is a field on the unit record in EquipFlow. When the dispatcher creates a rental, the billing module pulls the class-level rate for that unit automatically. A 45-foot rough-terrain scissor and a 19-foot electric scissor on the same customer account bill at their respective class rates without manual rate entry. Full detail at the billing module page.

Maintenance and meter readings.

Rough-terrain boom lifts run on engine hours. Electric scissor lifts run on motor hours. Both track differently, and PM intervals are set in hours on the unit record in EquipFlow. The mechanic does not set PM intervals on a calendar — they set them in hours, and the meter reading that comes back with the return inspection updates the unit’s hour count automatically.

When a unit crosses its PM threshold, it is flagged for service on the maintenance queue. Units flagged for service cannot be dispatched until the PM is completed and cleared. Work orders, parts, and technician notes live on the unit record. Full detail at the maintenance module page.

Dispatch and integrations.

The dispatch board shows every active rental, every driver, and every unit in one view. Units returning from a turnaround, units flagged for service, units available for the next call — all visible without navigating sub-modules. Double-booking prevention is built in.

EquipFlow connects to QuickBooks Online directly. Invoices post when closed. Payments sync back. Month-end does not require manual re-entry.

What you give up.

Aerial lift yards should know a few things EquipFlow does not do before they switch.

No operator-certification tracking across multiple yards.

Operator cert documentation is stored on the customer record in EquipFlow. If you operate a single yard, that is enough. If you ever expand to a second location, operator cert records do not automatically span multiple EquipFlow accounts — each yard is its own tenant. Multi-location cert management is outside the current scope.

No customer self-service portal for cert uploads.

There is no customer-facing portal where operators or safety coordinators can upload their own insurance certs or operator certifications directly. Those documents still come over email and get attached manually on the customer record. A customer self-service upload portal is on the roadmap but does not ship today.

No automatic flag for overdue frequent inspections.

ANSI A92.20 requires frequent inspections by a competent person on an interval tied to service history, not a fixed calendar. EquipFlow will flag a unit for PM when it crosses its hours-based threshold, but it does not maintain a separate frequent-inspection-due tracker that auto-flags units based on the ANSI inspection cadence. Hours-based PM will catch most of this; inspection-cadence compliance tracking is a manual process today.

Pricing.

One flat monthly fee per yard. Unlimited seats — your dispatcher, bookkeeper, mechanic, and owner are all on the same plan. No per-user billing, no module add-ons, no implementation fee. See pricing.