Most people searching this term are shopping for a jib to bolt down permanently, and that is a purchase rather than a hire. The rental answer is narrower and more useful for a short job: yards hire portable floor cranes, A-frame gantries and truck-mounted booms by the day or week, while the wall-bracket and free-standing mast types are fixed installations that get bought and anchored. If your lift is temporary, the hire counter is the right counter.
What a rental counter actually stocks
A portable floor crane, rated somewhere between one and four tons, rolls on casters with a folding leg and lifts an engine, a pump or a motor out of a bay. An A-frame gantry with a beam and a trolley handles wider loads over a fixed span. A truck-mounted boom rides to site. Fixed mast and wall jibs are outside the hire fleet.
Rated capacity falls as the boom extends
Every one of these machines is rated at a boom position, not in general. A floor crane advertised at two tons may carry a quarter of that at full extension, and the plate on the boom gives the figure for each hole. Work out the heaviest lift at the furthest reach you need, then hire against that number rather than against the headline rating.
What it costs to hire one
Expect roughly $90 to $250 a day for a portable floor crane or a small gantry, with the week landing near three day rates. Chains, slings and shackles are usually a separate line and are worth taking from the same counter, because rigging that arrives with the machine has been inspected with it. Deposits are common on the smaller units.
Getting it in the door
A floor crane is heavy, awkward and low-slung, which makes doorway width, threshold lips and floor surface the real constraints. Casters that roll on smooth concrete stall on gravel and gouge epoxy. Measure the narrowest opening on the route and say what the floor is when you book, so the yard sends a machine that fits rather than one that has to go back.
Questions people ask about jib cranes
Can I rent a jib crane instead of buying one?
You can rent the portable equivalents, floor cranes, gantries and boom trucks. Fixed wall and mast jibs are anchored into a structure and are sold rather than hired, because installing and removing one costs more than the hire would.
What size floor crane do I need?
Take the heaviest thing you will lift, add the weight of the rigging, and then check that figure against the crane's rating at the reach you need rather than at its shortest boom setting. Most shop work sits comfortably inside a two-ton machine.
Does the hire include chains and slings?
Usually not. Rigging is priced separately and is cheap next to the crane, and taking it from the same yard means it has been inspected on the same cycle as the machine you are hiring.