Yes, and it is one of the easiest machines in the country to hire. A 3 to 7 kW portable comes off the shelf for about $60 to $110 a day and rides home in a pickup bed. A towable 25 to 60 kW diesel set is a delivered machine at roughly $250 to $400 a day, and above that size you are booking a truck slot as well.
What size set the job actually needs
Add the running watts of everything that will run at once, then leave headroom for whatever starts under load. A compressor, a pump or a saw draws several times its running figure for a second or two, and that surge is what stalls an undersized set. Yards will size it from a list of your tools, and they would rather do that than swap it twice.
What the rate does and does not include
The number quoted on the phone is usually the machine alone. Fuel is a separate line, billed either as a full tank returned or as a refuel charge at the yard price. Delivery and collection are quoted each way on anything towable. The damage waiver is its own line as well, and you can decline it where your policy already covers hired plant.
Fuel, hours and who refills it
A portable gasoline set empties its tank in five to ten hours at half load, so a weekend job needs cans on site. Diesel towables carry a day or more and are metered by hours rather than days on longer hires. Ask what the hour allowance is before the machine leaves the yard, because overtime hours are billed after the fact.
Feeding a building is not a rental question
A cord and a tool is a rental transaction. Feeding a panel is electrical work: it needs a transfer switch and, in most places, a licensed electrician and an inspection. Yards hire the set and the cords, and they do not wire your house. Settle that half separately, because it decides which set you should hire in the first place.
Questions people ask about can you rent a generator
Do rental yards deliver generators?
Portables you collect yourself. Anything towable or skid mounted is delivered, quoted out and back, and priced on distance rather than on the machine. In a metro area budget a couple of hundred dollars for the round trip. A rural site far from the nearest branch costs more because the truck is out longer.
How many rental yards are likely to hold one?
The Census Bureau counts 5,830 equipment rental establishments across 544 counties in all fifty states, and generators sit in both categories it counts: the machinery yards and the general rental centers. That count says how many exist, not which of them has a 45 kW set free next Tuesday.
Where can a hired generator sit on site?
Outdoors, on level ground, with clear space around the exhaust and well away from doors, windows and air intakes. Exhaust from a set running in a partly enclosed space is the hazard that kills people every winter. Cords run from the machine to the work, never the machine into the building.