The short answer on long term EWP hire downtime
Most downtime is not the fault, it is the wait after it. Phone support that actually solves things, somebody who can attend, and a replacement machine if yours has to come away are what decide whether a breakdown costs you hours or days.
When a machine is central to how you earn, a day it is off the road is not an inconvenience, it is a day of your crew standing around and a day of your programme slipping. On a long hire that arithmetic is the whole game.
Here is what actually causes downtime on a hired tower, and what can be done about each one.
Long term EWP hire: downtime is rarely the breakdown
The mechanical fault is usually the short part. What costs the days is the wait: waiting for somebody to answer, waiting for somebody to attend, waiting for a part, waiting for a replacement that may or may not be coming.
The fault
Often hours, sometimes minutes. A surprising proportion are solved on the phone by somebody who knows the machine.
The wait for a diagnosis
Days, if nobody can attend. This is where most lost time actually lives.
The wait for a part
Unpredictable. Mitigated entirely by having another machine to put you in.
The wait for a decision
The worst kind, because nothing is happening at all. Avoided by knowing the process before you need it.
The machine breaking is not the problem. Not knowing when you will be working again is the problem.
The four steps that actually get you back on the job
- Phone first, because most of it is solved there
Between our arborists, mechanics and auto electricians there is very little we have not already seen on these machines. A large share of faults are talked through and fixed on the spot. - If it needs eyes on it, somebody comes
A fault that cannot be described down a phone needs somebody to look at it. That is a person travelling, not a ticket in a queue. - If it has to come away, a replacement goes out
This is the one that matters. The machine going in for repair should not be the same event as your crew stopping work. - Your crew keeps working
Which is the only outcome that counts. It may not be the identical model, but it is a machine that does the job.
Get this in writing before you book
A backup machine is either part of how the hire works or it is a hope. Ask specifically: if this machine has to go in for repair, what do I get, and how fast. Then ask for it in writing. On our hires it applies from the first day and it is not something you earn over time.
What you can do at your end
Plenty of downtime is preventable and some of it is preventable by the hirer rather than the hire company.
Do the pre-start properly
Every day, not just the first. Most in-service faults announce themselves before they stop the machine.
Report small things early
A weep, a noise, a slow function. Small faults reported early get fixed at a service. Ignored, they become a breakdown on a Friday.
Keep the machine clean
Particularly on an insulated unit, where contamination on the insulated section is a genuine safety issue as well as a maintenance one.
Familiarise every operator
A large share of what gets reported as a fault is an operator unfamiliar with that specific machine’s controls or interlocks.
Watch the ground
Setting up on soft or uneven ground is hard on a machine as well as unsafe. Stabiliser and chassis damage is expensive downtime.
Plan around the service
On a long hire a scheduled service will fall due mid-term. Knowing when means it happens on a quiet day rather than a critical one.
Scheduled maintenance is not downtime if it is planned
On a hire of three months or more, at least one service interval will land inside the term. The safe-use standard sets out inspection intervals[1], and an insulated machine also has its six-monthly electrical test. None of that is optional.
What is optional is whether it costs you a working day. On our hires we plan around your programme rather than ours, and where a machine has to come in, another one goes out. If a hire company cannot tell you when the next service falls due, that is worth knowing before you sign rather than after.
Why an in-house workshop changes the numbers
The difference is queue position. A fleet maintained in-house can move a customer’s machine to the front of its own queue. A fleet without a workshop is booking into somebody else’s, alongside everybody else’s work. On a one-day hire that difference is invisible. On a three month programme it is the difference between a hire that works and one that does not.
The maintenance calendar on a long term EWP hire
Over a hire of any length the machine will need attention on a schedule, and the whole question is whether that attention is planned around your work or interrupts it.
The cadence is fixed and it is the same on every truck in the fleet. It does not appear on your invoice and you never pay a cent towards it.
| Interval | What is done | What it confirms |
|---|---|---|
| Every 3 months | Full safety inspection, every cover off: pins, bushes, hoses, legs, tyres, wheel bearings | Nothing is wearing or cracking unnoticed |
| Every 6 months | Electrical test on the insulated section, with a measured leakage figure | The machine is safe to be working with and around live power lines |
| Every 12 months | Load test on the boom, the basket and the legs | The machine still carries what its plate says it does |
| 10 years from new, then every 5 | Full recertification: boom off, crack testing on welds and pins, repaint, engineer sign-off | The structure is sound for another cycle |
On a short hire there is no room to schedule around a client. On a long term EWP hire there is, and that is one of the quieter advantages of a longer arrangement: we know when your machine is due and we work it around your programme rather than the other way round.
Recertification, and what happens to your hire when it comes due
Recertification is the big one, and it is the item people assume will cost them weeks.
A new tower is built and certified at the factory to last ten years, and recertification falls every five years after that. It is a genuine strip-down: the boom comes off, extensions and cylinders come out, welds and pins go through non-destructive crack testing, pins, bushes and hoses are replaced as needed, the machine is repainted, our engineer signs it off and a new plaque goes on.
That is not a two-day job. It is also not your problem. When a machine on hire comes due, a replacement tower goes out to you and yours comes back to the workshop. You keep working through it.
The same applies to the three-monthly, six-monthly and twelve-monthly work if it cannot be fitted around your schedule. The machine leaves, another one arrives, and the job continues.
The replacement tower is the whole answer
It is worth being blunt about this, because it is the single thing that decides whether a long hire runs smoothly.
If your machine has to come away from you for any reason at all, you get another tower. Breakdown, damage, scheduled service, recertification, it does not matter which. This is standard, not something extended to particular clients, and it is not conditional on whose fault anything was.
The honest limitation is which machine. It may not be the identical model while yours is away, and it may be a slightly different size. What does not vary is that there is always a machine ready to go and you are not sitting around waiting on one.
That is the difference people notice most against a large hire company, where a machine that stops is parked up and the client goes looking for a short-term hire somewhere else at short-term rates, out of pocket, while they wait.
Planning around your programme, not ours
A long hire lets both sides plan, and the planning is what removes the friction.
We go through the whole contract with you when you sign up: whether it suits the work you are actually doing, any particular scenarios on your side, and anything that needs accounting for before you start. It is a straightforward conversation and it means nothing catches you out later. The contract is only the starting point.
From there the practical things get easier. If your work pauses, tell us. If the job needs a bigger or smaller machine part-way through, tell us. If a run of small hold-ups has cost you time, tell us that too. These get worked out rather than treated as variations, and more than a decade of hire work has gone into the arrangement that makes that possible.
Early cancellation is worked out as a percentage based on the weeks remaining. We would rather have that conversation than have a client sitting on a machine they no longer need.
What a long hire settles about cost
The rate is the obvious benefit of a long term EWP hire and it is not the main one.
What a longer arrangement actually buys is a settled number. You know what the machine costs per month, that number does not move, and you can quote your own work against it with confidence. There is no re-booking, no short-term rate to absorb when a job overruns, and no transport charge each time the work moves.
The costs that are not yours are worth naming too. Scheduled maintenance, the electrical and load testing, recertification, and any failure through wear and tear. On a wear-and-tear failure we never charge you to run a truck down and back.
Where costs do apply is damage caused on site, and even then the two tiers are different. Small fixes and cosmetic damage are worked out directly between us, because a hose is cheaper and faster than a claim either way. Large-scale damage to the boom, the basket or the truck is an insurance job with paperwork at your end, and we will give you whatever you need from us to get it moving. Either way, you keep working.
What long-term clients actually end up doing
The pattern across our client base is the most useful evidence here, because it is not what people expect when they first ring.
Dozens of our clients hire year after year. Many are into their fourth and fifth year running, and a couple have been hiring from us for more than a decade. Very few of them started with a long arrangement. They started with a machine for a job, it worked, and the hire simply continued.
That is worth knowing because it suggests the decision is less final than it feels. Nobody has to commit to a year to find out whether the arrangement suits.
Speed is usually the surprise at the other end. About a week’s notice is comfortable, and it has been considerably faster when a job needed it. One Melbourne job rang on the Friday and was working with the machine on the Monday morning.
What to agree before a long term EWP hire starts
Short list, and it is the same list we work through at sign-up.
Which machine, and why that one: the height, the outreach, the basket capacity and the insulation rating the work actually needs. Where it will be based and what the access is like there. Whether your operators hold the ticket, and whether they have run that model. What happens if the work pauses. How the machine gets swapped when maintenance falls due. And who to ring when something stops.
Get those settled at the start and a long term EWP hire runs quietly for years, which is exactly what the clients into their fifth and tenth year would tell you.
Tell us what you are dealing with and we will come up with something that works for you.
Who answers the phone when something stops
On a long hire this matters more than anything on the quote, because over a year or two something will stop at least once.
You are ringing the people who run these machines, not a hire desk. Our towers are out on our own jobs every day, and decades of running them means a great many faults get identified in the call rather than a visit. A leg that will not set is usually a leg sensor, and that has been narrowed to a single wire over the phone.
If it needs hands on it, our mechanic is available the same day, with two diesel mechanics, a full-time auto electrician with more than thirty years’ experience, hydraulics specialists five minutes from the workshop, structural crack-testers and our engineer behind him. There are workshop contacts around Melbourne and Dandenong who fit our trucks in the same day because they know us.
That is the part of a long term EWP hire that never appears in a comparison of rates, and it is the part that decides how the year actually goes.
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
How do I minimise downtime on a long EWP hire?
What happens if a hired EWP breaks down mid-project?
Will I be charged while the machine is out of service?
Does scheduled servicing count as downtime?
How often do these machines actually need servicing?
Is a newer machine less likely to break down?
Am I charged while the machine is being serviced?
What happens when recertification falls due mid-hire?
Is the replacement always the same model?
Who pays if the machine fails through wear and tear?
Can I pause a long hire if my work stops?
Can I change to a bigger machine part-way through?
What does early cancellation cost?
How long do your clients typically hire for?
Who do I ring when the machine stops?
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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Elevating Work Platform Association of Australia: The national industry association for elevating work platforms, and the body behind the Yellow Card operator familiarisation programme.
- Energy Safe Victoria — Working around powerlines: The No Go Zone framework that decides how any work near overhead powerlines is planned, and the clearances that apply to plant and people.
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.
