A crane truck is a boom or knuckle boom mounted on a commercial chassis, and it exists for the lift that is too big for a forklift and too small to be worth mobilising a mobile crane. It drives itself to site, sets outriggers, lifts and leaves. Almost every hire comes with an operator, so what you are buying is hours on site rather than a machine on your yard.
Operated is the normal hire
Bare rental of anything with a boom above a few tons is rare, because the yard is releasing a road vehicle and a crane in one unit. The standard product is the truck with its operator, billed hourly. That suits the work: most boom truck jobs are half a day of setting steel, roof plant or a tank, and an operator doing it daily is quicker than the saving.
Capacity, again, is a figure on a chart
A truck advertised as fifteen tons carries that at minimum radius over the rear. At forty feet of radius on the side it might carry a small fraction of it. What matters is the weight of your load and the horizontal distance from the truck's centre to where it lands. Give the yard both and they will pick the truck from the chart.
Outriggers need ground, and the sky needs to be empty
The truck sets on outriggers, and those need firm ground, mats where the surface is soft, and clearance from basements, vaults and buried services. Overhead lines are the other constraint and the more serious one. Send a photo of the setup area when you book, because a truck that arrives to find nowhere to set up still bills its travel and minimum.
The lines that make up the invoice
Expect a four-hour minimum, portal-to-portal travel time from the yard, and sometimes a mobilisation charge on top. Rigging, and a second person on the ground where the lift needs one, are usually extra. Standby time while you wait for another trade counts as billed hours, so sequencing your day around the crane rather than the reverse is what keeps the total down.
Questions people ask about crane truck rental
How much does it cost to rent a crane truck for a day?
Most jobs are quoted hourly rather than daily, in the region of $150 to $400 an hour with a four-hour minimum and travel billed from the yard. A full day of a mid-size boom truck with its operator commonly lands somewhere in the low thousands.
Can I rent a boom truck without an operator?
Occasionally, for the smallest knuckle boom units, and rarely above that. Yards keep operated hire as the standard product because the unit is a road vehicle and a lifting machine at once, and their insurance is written around that.
Boom truck or mobile crane?
A boom truck wins when the load is moderate, the radius is short and access is tight, because it drives on, sets up in minutes and leaves. A mobile crane wins on weight, on reach, and on any lift needing to work over an obstruction at distance.