Availability and lead times
The first question a hirer asks is "have you got one or not". This page says how we answer it, and what makes a lead time short or long.
Why no stock figure is shown here
A hire fleet moves every day: an extension, a late return, a unit off the road for maintenance. An online availability table is right in the morning and wrong in the afternoon. We would rather give you an answer we stand behind the same day than a display that would cost you a day.
What determines a lead time
- Distance from the depot
- It decides the transport, and transport is often the longest item, ahead of preparing the equipment.
- Access to the site
- A site a semi-trailer can reach and a site that calls for a rigid lorry, a crane or a traffic slot are not delivered in the same lead time.
- Permissions
- Occupation of the public highway, traffic orders, a port slot, the project owner's authorisation: these are administrative lead times, and they cannot be made up.
- The state of the fleet on the date you want
- A unit on hire elsewhere does not come back sooner because the request is urgent.
- The prior survey
- On a straightforward site, a drawing and photographs are enough. On a constrained site, the survey is what avoids a wasted journey.
How to find out what is available today
Write to us with four things: what you need to power, the start and end dates, the address of the site, and how a heavy goods vehicle gets in. With that we answer on real availability, not on theoretical availability.
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