How to Lower the Cost of Lift Rental

This is Chris Matt, Managing Editor of Print & E-Media with Maintenance Solutions magazine. Today's tip is lowering the cost of renting aerial lift equipment.

Before managers can specify the right aerial lift equipment, they have several additional issues to consider to maximize the investment of time and money. To lower the cost per job, managers can combine several overhead jobs and schedule them simultaneously. The goal is to justify the transport cost from the rental agency to user site by fully using the aerial lift platform while it is on site. This means having several different projects ready to start when the unit arrives.

To ensure selection of the most appropriate lift for the various purposes, managers must consider the range of maintenance and engineering tasks that require accessing difficult-to-reach locations. Then they can select the aerial lift that can accommodate the worst conditions at each site — largest height, longest reach, largest load, etc. — that form a perfect storm of challenging applications and conditions.

Among the strategies to achieve this goal are these: Search the department's computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) database and completed work orders to identify hardest-to-reach job sites
• Review work orders to determine if technicians used special lift equipment.
• Tour the job sites to evaluate the conditions.
• Watch workers operate the particular aerial lift in locations similar to the planned site.
• Evaluate the job sites and applications using the seven questions above.
• Use a combination of the most demanding criteria to compile the list of specifications for the desired aerial lift platform.

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