About Equipment Rental Compare
Equipment Rental Compare is two things. The first is a set of guides to the machine classes a rental yard hires out: what each one is for, how to size it, and what changes the rate you are quoted. The second is an index of how many equipment rental establishments the US Census counts in every state and county, at the two NAICS codes that cover machine yards and tool counters. The quote form passes an enquiry to rental companies covering the county.
Why this site exists
This site exists because the two questions a hirer actually has, what size do I need and what will it cost, are answered almost everywhere by a phone number. The Census count is public and nobody had made it readable by county, and the sizing guidance that does exist is mostly written by the yard that wants the hire.
Who it is for
Contractors, landscapers and builders in the United States pricing a machine for a job, and homeowners with a project too big for hand tools
Not buyers of machines, not people financing one, and not rental companies shopping for software or fleet
What it does not do
- No directory of named rental companies. There is no register of rental yards in the United States, and inventing a list would mean publishing something nobody can check. The index counts establishments and says so.
- No invented prices. Where this site prints a figure it names the document it came from and the date it was read, and where a rate is not published it says so instead of estimating one.
- No pay-to-appear. The establishment index is Census data and no company can buy its way into it, because it names no companies at all.
What is on this site
7 guides, each with its sources on the page , 780 answers to the questions around them , and the directory.
- Excavator rental: Excavator rental is priced by machine size and hire length, and the mistake that costs most is renting the wrong size rather than paying the wrong rate.
- Skid steer rental: A skid steer is the machine people hire when the job is moving material rather than digging a hole, and the whole value of one is the attachment on the front.
- Boom lift rental: Boom lifts are hired by working height and by whether the machine has to reach over something or just go up.
- Scissor lift rental: A scissor lift is the cheapest way to put two people and their materials at height over a clear floor, and it is the wrong machine the moment anything has to be reached over.
- Forklift rental: Forklift rental turns on two numbers and one fact: how much you need to lift, how high you need to lift it, and whether the machine is going indoors.
- Tool rental: Tool rental is the other half of a rental yard and the half most homeowners actually meet.
- Generator rental: Generator rental splits cleanly into two jobs: keeping a site or an event running, and keeping a building running when the grid is not.
Where the figures come from
US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2022, NAICS 532412 and 532310, read 2026-09-10.
Who answers for it
Joseph Ellul, Operator, Equipment Rental Compare.
Reach us
Contact for a question about the site, or quotes@equipmentrentalcompare.com. The legal terms are on Terms and Privacy.