The short answer to is an EWP a boom lift
They are mostly the same thing. EWP is the umbrella term; cherry picker, travel tower, bucket truck and boom lift all describe a boom with a basket on the end. A scissor lift is genuinely different, because it has no sideways reach at all.
EWP, MEWP, cherry picker, travel tower, boom lift, bucket truck, knuckle boom, scissor lift. Eight names, and depending on who you ask some of them mean the same thing and some of them very much do not. If you are trying to hire the right machine, the vocabulary matters more than it should.
Here is what each one actually means, and which ones are worth arguing about.
The umbrella term
EWP stands for elevating work platform. It is the Australian umbrella term, and it is the one used in the standards[1] and by the regulator[2]. Any machine that raises a person on a platform to do work at height is an EWP.
MEWP means mobile elevating work platform, and it is the same thing with the mobility made explicit. You will see it more in international and European material. For practical purposes in Australia, when somebody says MEWP they mean EWP.
If you only remember one thing
EWP and MEWP are categories. Cherry picker, travel tower, boom lift and bucket truck are all names for machines inside that category. Scissor lift is inside the category too, but it is a genuinely different machine.
Is an EWP a boom lift? The ones that mean roughly the same thing
| Term | What people usually mean | Where the word comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Cherry picker | A truck or vehicle with a hinged boom and a basket on the end | Orchard work. The name stuck and now covers almost any boom-and-basket machine |
| Travel tower | The same machine, usually truck-mounted, usually insulated | Power industry usage. If somebody says travel tower they are often talking about line work |
| Bucket truck | The same machine again, named after the basket | North American usage, common in utilities and telco |
| Boom lift | A boom-and-basket machine, often self-propelled rather than truck-mounted | Hire industry usage. Covers both truck-mounted and drive-around units |
In practice, if you ring and ask for any of those four, you and the hire company will usually end up talking about the same class of machine. The differences that matter are underneath the name.
The ones that are genuinely different
Scissor lift
Goes straight up on a folding X-frame. No outreach at all. Excellent for indoor work and flat slabs, useless if you need to reach over anything.
Straight boom (telescopic)
The boom extends in a straight line. Maximum outreach for a given height, but it cannot get around an obstacle.
Knuckle boom (articulating)
The boom has a hinge partway along, so it can go up, over and back down. Less raw reach, far more ability to work around things.
Truck-mounted vs self-propelled
A truck-mounted unit drives to site on the road under its own power. A self-propelled unit drives around a site but has to be floated between sites.
The name on the machine matters far less than three numbers: working height, outreach, and whether it is insulated.
The three numbers that actually decide it
Working height
How high a person can reach to work. Roughly two metres above where their feet are, because it assumes an operator standing in the basket with arms up. This is the number on the spec sheet.
Platform height
Where the feet actually are. Always about two metres less than working height, and the number people get caught out by.
Outreach
How far sideways from the machine’s centre you can go. This decides whether you can park where you need to park.
The mistake we see most
Somebody books a machine on working height alone, then finds the outreach runs out three metres short of the far branch. Measure both before you book. If you cannot park directly under the work, outreach is the number that matters more.
Insulated and non-insulated
This is the distinction that is not in the name at all, and it is the one that decides whether a machine is legal on your job. An insulated unit has an insulated upper boom and an insulated liner in the basket, and it is tested and rated to work within the clearances that apply near live conductors. The design standard covers the classification[1].
Everything in our fleet is insulated. Not every machine called a cherry picker is. If your work goes anywhere near live conductors, ask the question explicitly rather than assuming the name covers it. We go through it properly in insulated or not.
Truck-mounted, self-propelled and trailer-mounted
The naming argument usually distracts from the distinction that actually changes what you can do, which is how the machine gets to the work and what it stands on.
A truck-mounted tower is built onto a road-registered truck. It drives to site under its own power, sets up on four jacklegs, and drives away. There is no float, no crane and no transport permit. Every machine we hire is this type.
A self-propelled machine drives around a site on its own wheels or tracks but is not road-registered, so it has to be floated between sites. That is a transport movement each way, with a cost and a schedule attached.
A trailer-mounted unit is towed behind a vehicle and set up on outriggers. Light and cheap to move, but limited in reach and capacity.
So when someone asks whether they need a boom lift or an EWP, the more useful question is which of those three families suits the job, because that is what decides the logistics.
Telescopic, articulated, and why the difference shows up on site
The second real distinction is the shape of the boom, and it decides what the machine can get around rather than how high it goes.
A telescopic boom extends in a straight line. It is the efficient way to put a basket a long way out or a long way up, and it is what gives a machine its outreach figure.
An articulated boom has knuckles, so it can fold up and over an obstruction and come back down on the other side. That is what lets a basket get in under a canopy, over a roofline or behind a parapet.
Most useful machines are a combination. The Redmond Gary TF17M is telescopic with an articulated fly jib, which is exactly the arrangement that suits tree and line work: the telescope gets you out there, the jib gets you in behind something.
If the work has anything in front of it, the jib matters more than the height.
Reading a compliance plate
Every machine carries a plate, and it settles arguments that brochures start. It is worth knowing how to read one.
The plate carries the model, the serial number, the year of manufacture, the working height the machine was built to, the safe working load, the maximum operating incline, the maximum wind speed, and where applicable the insulation level.
Those figures override any spec sheet, brochure or web page that disagrees with them. We have had that exact situation on our own fleet: a GMJ LL22.350 carries a plate reading 23.5 metres working height and an insulation level of 66/33/LV, and where earlier copy said 23.5 metres the plate is what stands.
The two figures worth checking before any line-adjacent job are the insulation level and the date of the last electrical test. The first tells you what the machine was built to withstand; the second tells you whether that is still true.
Ask for a photograph of the plate if you are specifying a job around a machine you have not seen. Any hire company that hesitates over that is telling you something.
Insulated ratings, and what the numbers after the slash mean
An insulation rating is not a single number, and the parts of it carry different meanings.
A rating written as 66/33/LV describes the levels the machine is built and tested to at different points in its structure. A rating quoted as a single figure with a qualifier, such as 66 kV dry only, means what it says: the rating holds in clean, dry conditions and the machine is not rated for wet work.
That qualifier is not a detail. A machine rated dry only is a different machine, on a wet morning, from one rated for wet and precipitation. The Redmond Gary TF17M is rated 132 kV across dry, wet and precipitation conditions, certified to AS 1418.10:2011 and acceptance tested to 275 kV. That is not the same claim as an unqualified number on a brochure.
If a rating is quoted to you without conditions, ask what conditions it holds in. If it is quoted without a plate behind it, ask for the plate.
The words that mean nothing
Some terms in circulation carry no technical definition at all, and treating them as specifications leads people astray.
Cherry picker is a colloquialism. It describes the general idea rather than a category, and it gets applied to everything from a trailer unit to a 23-metre insulated tower.
Travel tower is a descriptive phrase for a truck-mounted boom lift and is used generically in the industry. It is not a category on any standard, and where it appears as part of a business name that is a trading name rather than a machine type.
Bucket truck and knuckle boom are similarly informal. They tell you roughly what someone means and nothing about capability.
None of that makes them wrong to use. It makes them the wrong thing to specify a job against.
The vocabulary, side by side
One table, and the argument goes away.
| Term | What it means | Is it a specification? |
|---|---|---|
| EWP | Elevated work platform: the umbrella term for the whole family | No, it is a category |
| MEWP | Mobile elevating work platform; the same family, the term used in most standards | No, it is a category |
| Boom lift | An EWP that reaches on a boom rather than lifting straight up | Partly; it excludes scissor lifts |
| Cherry picker | Colloquial, applied to almost any boom-type EWP | No |
| Travel tower | Descriptive term for a truck-mounted boom lift | No |
| Bucket truck | Informal, usually a truck-mounted unit with an enclosed basket | No |
| Scissor lift | Lifts vertically on a folding frame; no outreach | Yes, genuinely different |
| Telescopic | Boom extends in a straight line | Yes |
| Articulated | Boom has knuckles and can fold over an obstruction | Yes |
| Insulated | Built and tested to provide electrical separation, to a stated rating | Yes, and check the conditions |
What to say when you ring a hire company
Forget the terminology. Six pieces of information will get you the right machine faster than any of it.
How high the work is, and whether that is to your feet or to the top of what you are working on. How far the machine will have to stand back, and what is in between. What has to fit through, at the tightest point on the route. How much weight goes in the basket, counting the people, the tools and anything removed. Whether anything live is nearby, and at what voltage. And how long you need it.
Answer those and it does not matter whether you called it a boom lift, a cherry picker or a travel tower. We will tell you which machine suits, and if nothing in the fleet does we will say so.
So the honest answer to whether an EWP is a boom lift is that a boom lift is one kind of EWP, the terms overlap enough that nobody will misunderstand you, and the specification is what settles it.
Why the fleet spans several brands
A question that comes up once people start comparing machines is why a hire fleet would run half a dozen different makes rather than standardising on one.
Our fleet includes Sherrin, Versalift, Redmond Gary, Terex Hi-Ranger, Altec, GMJ and Italmec machines, spanning roughly 12.8 metres to 23.5 metres of working height. That looks like a maintenance headache and it is the opposite.
The machines are similar enough underneath that faults cross over. A sensor behaviour learned on one brand shows up on another, and after enough years of running all of them the diagnosis gets faster rather than slower. It is a large part of why so many faults get identified on the phone before anyone drives anywhere.
It also means the machine can be matched to the job rather than the job squeezed into whatever the fleet happens to be. Different jobs want different combinations of height, outreach, basket capacity, insulation rating and set-up width, and no single model covers all of it.
We are in the trees ourselves, so the fleet is shaped by what the work actually asks for.
Which machine suits which job
Every tower in our fleet is an insulated EWP, so the question is never which one is better. It is which one carries what your job needs. Three figures decide it — working height, outreach and basket capacity — and a fourth, the insulation rating and the conditions it holds in, decides whether the machine can be near the line at all.
Working heights below come off the compliance plates rather than brochures. Where a manufacturer does not publish a figure it is shown as on request rather than estimated, because a made-up spec on a hire page is a safety problem rather than a cosmetic one.
| Machine | Working height | Outreach | Basket | Insulation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GMJ LL22.350 | 23.5 m | 13 m | 350 kg | 66/33/LV on the plate |
| Redmond Gary TF17M | 19 m | 13 m | 325 kg | 132 kV — dry, wet and precipitation |
| Sherrin 18 m | 18 m | 11.1 m | 350 kg | 132 kV, Glove & Barrier build |
| GMJ TT16.300 | 17.5 m | On request | 250 kg | On the plate — ask us for your job |
| Terex Hi-Ranger LT40 | 13.8 m | 9 m | 181 kg | ANSI Category C under A92.2 |
| Versalift SST-37 | 12.8 m | 8.5 m | On request | Fitted as an option — ask first |
| Altec AT30C | On request | On request | On request | On request |
The tallest tower we run, and the one that goes out when nothing shorter will reach — 13 metres of outreach still intact at full height, on a basket that takes two people and what they bring down.
Rated 132 kV dry, wet and in precipitation, which is the rating that matters when the job does not stop because the weather turned. Long outreach for its height.
A Glove & Barrier build on a 350 kg basket. The one to ask about when the work is close-quarters on live gear rather than simply near it.
A mid-height tower that gets into ground the bigger machines cannot. Ask us for the plate figures against your specific job rather than working off a brochure.
Compact and quick to set up, rated ANSI Category C under A92.2. Suits tight residential access where a full-size tower simply will not fit.
Low travel height, which is what gets it under a carpark header or a low branch line. Insulation is fitted as an option, so confirm it before the job is booked.
A compact telescopic tower. We publish figures off the compliance plate rather than the brochure, so ask us and we will send the plate for the unit going to your job.
Every tower above travels to Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton and Gippsland — driven to site under its own power, not floated in on a separate truck.
Which one to take when the forecast is against you
This separates the fleet more than height does, and it is the question people ask last.
An insulation rating holds under stated conditions. Most insulated towers carry a rating for clean, dry conditions and a lower one for wet. The Redmond Gary TF17M is the one certified across dry, wet and precipitation at 132 kV, which is why it is the machine that goes out when rain is forecast and the work cannot wait.
That is not a mark against the others — it is what that particular machine has. For everything else in the fleet the rated conditions are on the plate, and the practical answer is to tell us the job and the forecast and we will tell you which tower is rated for it. We would far rather have that conversation on the phone than have you find out on the day.
Two things do not change with the weather: the six-monthly electrical test that confirms the machine is safe to be working with and around live power lines, and the fact that a replacement tower comes out if yours has to leave you.
Tree work near the line, and work on the line
Nearly everything our towers go out on is one of two jobs, and they pull in different directions.
Tree work near a live service is about reach and what comes down. You are standing off the conductor and working over or around it, so outreach matters more than raw height, and basket capacity matters because limbs come back with you. The GMJ LL22.350 and the Sherrin 18 m both carry 350 kg for exactly that reason.
Work on the line itself is about the insulation rating and the conditions, and often about getting into a tighter spot at a lower height. That is where the Terex Hi-Ranger LT40 earns its place — a light Class 5 chassis with a fibreglass boom that goes where a bigger truck cannot.
We are arborists as well as machine specialists, and the towers are out on our own tree jobs every day. That is why the fleet is shaped the way it is rather than standardised on one model.
Whatever you call it — insulated EWP hire, travel tower hire, cherry picker hire, a bucket truck, a boom lift or a man lift — describe the job and we will match the machine to it.
Insulated EWP hire across Victoria
Every tower is a truck, so it drives to you under its own power and sets up on its own legs. There is no float to book and no crane at either end, which is why distance behaves differently for us than it does for hire companies working off floated plant.
We hire right across Victoria. Beyond the towns above we run into Dandenong and the outer east, right through Gippsland where we are based, and up into the north-east — the Wangaratta and Wodonga side of the state is no trouble at all, we are over that way regularly. If your job is somewhere not listed here it is almost certainly still covered: insulated EWP hire across Victoria.
Tell us the job. We will tell you the tower.
Wet hire or dry hire, anywhere in Victoria, with a replacement machine behind it from the first day.
Frequently asked questions
Is an EWP a boom lift?
What is the difference between a cherry picker and a travel tower?
What is the difference between a boom lift and an articulating boom lift?
What is the difference between an EWP and a scissor lift?
What does MEWP stand for?
Which type do I need for tree work near powerlines?
Is an EWP a boom lift, or are they different things?
What is the difference between EWP and MEWP?
Is a travel tower a brand?
What is the difference between telescopic and articulated?
How do I know what a machine is actually rated to?
What does an insulation rating like 66/33/LV mean?
Is a scissor lift an EWP?
Does the terminology change what licence I need?
Does it matter which brand of machine I hire?
What sizes does your fleet cover?
Read next
Valley Wide Tree Services / 1800 GO TREES
Insulated EWP hire, Victoria
We run and maintain our own fleet of insulated elevating work platforms from a workshop in the Latrobe Valley, and we have been putting machines on Victorian jobs for years. Everything here is written from running them, not from a brochure.
Sources & references
- Standards Australia — AS 1418.10, Cranes, hoists and winches: elevating work platforms: The design and manufacture standard for elevating work platforms, including the classification of insulated units.
- WorkSafe Victoria — Elevating work platforms: The Victorian regulator’s guidance on selecting, setting up and operating an EWP, including the duties that sit with whoever controls the workplace.
- Standards Australia — AS 2550.10, Cranes, hoists and winches: safe use of elevating work platforms: The standard covering inspection intervals, operator requirements and the periodic major inspection regime that a hire fleet’s service schedule is built on.
- Elevating Work Platform Association of Australia: The national industry association for elevating work platforms, and the body behind the Yellow Card operator familiarisation programme.
- WorkSafe Victoria — Safe work practices using elevating work platforms: The regulator’s practical guidance note. States that a boom-type EWP with a boom length over 11 metres requires the operator to hold a high risk work licence.
General information only, current at the time of writing. Requirements change and every site is different. Confirm the rules that apply to your job with the relevant authority and with whoever controls the workplace before work starts.
