Are spider lifts a good investment for a hire company?

The advantages of adding EWPs to your fleet

With the growing number of spider lifts in Australia, more and more of your potential customers understand the multiple applications a spider lift can achieve, and will want to use them.

So the question is: are they a good fit for your hire company fleet?

At first glance, you might think that they may be too difficult for a hire company to deal with. After all, a complex machine in the hands of an inexperienced operator could be problematic.

And it’s true that, compared to a trailer mounted EWP, a spider lift does bring some additional complexities.

However, today’s spider lifts have a great deal of good design thinking that makes them more user friendly, therefore requiring minimal training – and that makes them an ideal choice for your hire company fleet.

Let’s take a look at the benefits of spider lifts for hire companies.

Who hires spider lifts?

Because they solve so many problems, you’ll find you have a wide market of potential users for spider lifts. For example:

Outdoors

• Trades – such as electricians, painters and plumbers
• External property maintenance
• Glaziers who deal with double glazing of double storey windows, especially when glazing from top stories therefore requiring light weight and tight access dimensions.
• Structural steel erectors
• Property maintenance for amusement parks (both indoors and outdoors)
• Tree trimmers who need a second or larger machine for a specific project
• Telecommunications companies hire spider lifts which are cheaper and quicker than a helicopter.
• Roofing contractors
• Window cleaners
• Sporting fields and schools. eg. councils and government departments

Indoors

• Shopping centres
• Trades
• Fire and safety
• Industrial areas such as assembly, manufacturing facilities
• In fact, almost anywhere with narrow ingress and fragile surfaces or floors

Why spider lifts are easy to hire

An important advantage of spider lifts is that even inexperienced operators can use them very effectively.

You’ll benefit from a ready market of people who have a “Working at heights over 11m EWP” licence. These people already understand working at heights, which means that watching a video for that particular machine is enough to have them ready to do the job.

You can also easily have your team trained to be able to give an induction – or simply simply trained over a zoom call allowing you to still keep your team onsite!

Your hire business can become a “one-stop-shop”

As we said above, thanks to their versatility, spider lifts can help a lot of people solve a lot of problems. And that means people can get more jobs done in more places, more quickly, and at a lower cost than by using other means.

When you offer modern, high-demand equipment such as spider lifts, your business can become the go-to hire company in the minds of your potential customers.

That means you’ll retain more business out of the hands of the competition, and can convert more customers into long-term high value clients.

What return on investment does a spider lift offer?

Clearly, you want the machine you purchase to be out on hire as much as possible. With a spider lift, your utilisation rate can be leveraged because it is a specialist machine that commands a high per-day rate compared to a boom or scissor lift.

Hire companies typically see a very strong ROI with spider lifts.

For example, looking at the hire market in a typical metro area (as at July 2022):

• A 12m knuckle boom lift retails for around $82,000 + GST. You can hire it out for $550 + GST per week.
• By comparison, a 12m spider lift retails for $99,900 + GST. Yet you can hire it out for $2,450 + GST per week.

You can see that, even with a lower utilisation rate, your business will still be way in front in terms of ROI when you invest in a spider lift.

You can sub-hire spider lifts for even more opportunities

Larger spider lift suppliers – such as Monitor – will be able to assist you with sub-hiring their fleet, in the event that yours is fully booked. It helps you say ‘yes’ to more clients, more often.

This arrangement could bring you more profit, without ownership – allowing you to grow your business even further than you may have thought possible.

Talk to us about spider lifts for hire companies

If you choose to expand your business and offer spider lifts in your range, look for a supplier who provides video support to ensure the hiring process goes smoothly. A highly experienced supplier that can assist with product training/inductions, saving your staff spending excessive time with your customer. They should also be able to assist with any technical issues that may arise as the machines get into the hands of your clients.

All of these advantages can be yours when you choose to do business with Monitor. Our friendly team will do whatever we can to make it easy for you to hire out spider lifts.

To find out how a spider lift could benefit your hire company, call Monitor on 1800 025 024 or contact us online.