Crane Hire for Better Project Costs

Cranes are one of those things that builders need but really shouldn’t own. The headaches and costs of actually owning and maintaining a crane are absolutely astronomical: crane hire allows construction companies to get all the benefits of heavy lifting gear without having to pay for its upkeep, safety accreditations and maintenance.

Obviously, some of the hire charge involved in leasing cranes is factored in to allow the companies that own the things to pay for their maintenance and so on. That’s not the same thing, though, as having to bear those charges oneself. Given that one needs a crane for only limited portions of one’s actual build, the costs of ownership (plus the costs of bearing the whole maintenance charge oneself) are far outweighed by the benefits of crane hire.

Consider these expenses and the sense in hiring rather than owning a crane becomes rapidly apparent. First, there’s the issue of general maintenance. A crane is obviously a potentially extremely dangerous object – it’s huge, it’s heavy and its job is to swing enormous bits of building through the air hundreds of feet off the ground. Anything going wrong with this setup can lead quickly to tragedy. So the maintenance of a crane is frequent and in depth – exhaustive safety checks have to be carried out, mechanical bits have to be checked and the whole thing needs to be overhauled a minimum of twice a year. Crane hire means all of that is someone else’s problem: crane ownership means not only paying for all those checks and overhauls, including of course buying any new parts that need fitting; but finding the time to arrange them.

Next there’s the issue of finding a qualified driver. A crane needs to be manned by skilled operatives, trained and accredited in its operation. Hiring a crane usually gives one the option of hiring a driver too. Otherwise one has to find one, hire one, and pay him or her for the duration of a project – on top of the costs of running the crane in the first place. When one opts for crane hire, one gets the driver and the maintenance checks included in the price.

Then there’s setting the crane up for work. A static crane, for example, requires a trained, skilled team to erect it and can take a day or more to put in place. That’s a whole day of lost work, if everyone employed by a company has to pitch in to get the crane up – not to mention the fact that they all have to be trained to do it first. Hiring a static crane involves setup as part of the rental agreement: the company that owns the machine will set it up, maintain it, and dismantle it when it is no longer needed.

There’s another advantage: storage. When one uses a crane hire company, one just relinquishes the machine at the end of the build period – someone else has to worry about storing it properly. If one owned the crane, one would be paying for a place to store it: somewhere one could guarantee its delicate working parts wouldn’t get damaged by stacking or weather.

All in all, then owning cranes is only good for crane hire companies. For builders – hiring is the way forward. All the convenience without any of the expense.