Short term rental: what and how… but especially who

Chances are you’ll know for certain when you need a forklift truck on short-term rental (also known as short-term hire). It’s usually to handle short-term demands.

But choosing who to rent from is every bit as important: for reasons of productivity, dependability, and safety.

How you benefit

Let’s begin by recapping some of the many benefits associated with short-term rental.

It offers great flexibility, allowing you to respond almost instantly to changing circumstances such as breakdown of your own equipment, seasonal peaks, or moving an exceptionally heavy or bulky load.

The benefits include the ability to stop and start the rental to suit your situation, from a single day to a year or more… often with the option to swap or upgrade models to suit your needs.

Importantly, with short-term rental you don’t have the hassle of repairing or maintaining the trucks: that’s the responsibility of the supplier. And, because you don’t own the equipment, there’s no depreciation on your balance sheet, which can be advantageous for tax purposes.

You can even use short-term rental to test equipment before you make your next purchase, discovering, for example, whether different fuel types would suit your business (e.g. is electric better than diesel?) or whether it’s time for something more specialised — like a reach truck to increase your storage density.

But why is the choice of rental company so important?

Choosing the right supplier

You’re only keeping the equipment for a short period… so how much difference does the right supplier make?

As with every other business transaction, it’s crucial to find someone you can trust to support you, someone who will deliver the best/most appropriate equipment along with the best backup should anything go wrong. And that is especially important in circumstances where the whole reason for the transaction is because the pressure’s on and you simply can’t afford any snarl-ups.

In our case, as part of a world-leading manufacturer of materials handling equipment, we bring a reputation for excellence that has seen us win national and international awards.

Our rental fleets — from centres strategically located around the UK (rest assured, there’s one near you) — comprise largely of trucks from our contract hire fleet. These will have been serviced by trained engineers, using genuine manufacturer’s parts to keep them in peak condition, so you benefit from our near-legendary reputation for reliability and non-stop performance.

Working with your nearest Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks provider also means you have access to a particularly large and diverse range of equipment. This ensures you receive not just the right type of truck for your needs (reach, counterbalance, warehouse, electric, IC engine etc), but also the right size of model to handle the load, lift to the highest points, and still fit through your doorways.

With a smaller supplier you may need to settle for what’s on offer… and no-one should ever expect you to compromise on performance and, above all, safety.

Finally, and it goes without saying perhaps, but every short-term rental truck we deliver is guaranteed to come with an up-to-date certificate of examination (LOLER), keeping you fully in line with HSE requirements and ahead of your competition.