Renting Towable Booms for Sign Work

We’ve had sign companies ask if there is an objective tool to show when it’s time to stop renting a towable boom and purchase a Van Ladder. It seems like a straightforward math problem, right? Well, as I’ve worked on creating this cost calculator, I’ve discovered that some of the variables are easier to describe than they are to quantify. Here’s what I mean:

Variable #1: Price and availability of towable boom lifts

This seems like an easy step in the formula—discovering who rents towable lifts in your area and obtaining the prices, starting with your closest and most affordable options. For example, in my town, Home Depot has a 35’ lift and a 50’ lift, which they rent out for a minimum of 4 hours. They also have daily, monthly, or weekly rates.

After talking with several Van Ladder customers (who formerly rented these lifts), I learned that the daily option is the most popular, which in my town is currently about $500 for the 50’ towable lift.

Here is the strategy that our former customers often used to maximize their daily rental investment:

They’d set the installation appointment with their customer for Tuesday morning, for example. Then they would schedule a couple of surveys for potential jobs on Tuesday afternoon, not wanting to incur a separate rental expense for surveys that may or may not become orders. Ideally, they’d tackle the installation in the morning and knock off the two surveys in the afternoon.

This is where the ideal day usually parts ways with their actual day. With three appointments lined up, what are the chances that one of them will need to reschedule? According to our former lift-renters, you can almost bank on it. Then what? Do you put off one of the surveys until the next time you rent a lift for an installation? What if the potential customer isn’t willing to wait that long for a quote? And even if they are willing to wait, delaying the survey can be a bad first impression. So now you’re forking over a 4-hour rental fee on a different day to tackle one survey.

Another irritating variable-within-the-variable is that most of the rental companies follow a first-come-first-serve policy, meaning the sign company needs to have someone at the rental shop at 6:00 a.m. to ensure they get the lift for the day. If the installation is scheduled for 8:00 a.m., they’ve lost two hours before their day has even started. “What’s worse, though, is when the guy who had the lift the prior day decides not to bring it back. Now you’re calling other, more expensive (and further away) rental shops to find a towable lift, hoping you won’t have to reschedule all three appointments. But that’s not even the worst scenario. The worst scenario is renting the lift and getting it to the jobsite, only to discover that it’s not working properly because the guy who had it yesterday had an issue and didn’t report it. Now your schedule is wrecked AND you look bad in front of your customer. These trainwrecks are stories we hear over and over, but it’s hard to figure the costs on a spreadsheet.

Okay, let’s say you get the lift, and it works fine, but the installation doesn’t go as expected (Imagine that…an install not going as expected). Let’s say it takes all day. Now you’re stuck paying another half day for the lift to tackle two surveys that may or may not turn into orders (So much for killing three birds with one stone).

It’s hard to overstate how many hours are saved by having a truck right there when you need it. It allows you to conform to your customers’ schedule instead of making them conform to yours. And what is the value of a happy customer? For that matter, what is the value of tackling surveys on the same day the quote request comes in? It’s hard to precisely quantify a quick quote turnaround, but it certainly leads to more sales.

Variable #2: Logistics

The employee you sent to get the lift needed a pickup with a hitch, so he took the shop truck. However, the sign is still at the shop, along with all the necessary tools and fasteners. So, while your installer’s assistant is off renting the towable lift, your installer is putting together a checklist with all the tools, fasteners, wiring, and whatever else is required for the installation. Since the shop truck is gone, your installer loads everything into your (the owner’s) pick-up because it’s the only vehicle left at the shop with a hitch, and he needs the hitch to hook up the utility trailer to haul the sign to the jobsite. Now you have two employees who have spent two hours preparing for the installation. That’s four labor hours that could have been avoided by having a fully stocked Van Ladder sitting at your shop. Oh, and since you no longer have your vehicle, you ask your graphic designer to give you a ride to the job site to pick it up, which takes an hour from your day and an hour from your designer’s day (more unbillable hours).

Variable #3: Set-up time and re-set-up time

Towable lifts are notoriously cumbersome to set up. For one thing, you need a lot of room to back the lift into position. If your job site is a busy parking lot at a strip mall, you probably don’t often have the luxury of a long runway to get exactly where you need to go. So now you’re waiting for cars to move before you can even get started.

Once you have the lift in place, you spend time getting level before the controls can work, and this process is repeated every time you move the lift to a different spot. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a truck that fits into a single stall with no set-up time?

Variable #4: Utilizing your manpower

Towable lifts don’t have accessories to hold the sign, so installations generally require two people in the bucket—one running the controls and operating the tools, and the other holding the sign. Conversely, the Van Ladder’s Chariot Bucket has accessories to hold the sign, allowing a two-person crew to divide and conquer. Rather than standing in the bucket holding the sign, the second person can run wires behind the wall, uncrate the sign, clean channel letters, or whatever else needs to be accomplished on the ground. With some practice, this division of labor can cut your installation time in half.

Doing the numbers

So, on a monthly basis, if you’re spending more renting lifts than a new truck payment (including insurance), it’s probably a no-brainer to buy the truck. But given how much more efficient and flexible you could be with a fully stocked truck, the best time to pull the trigger might be sooner. How much sooner? I can’t say until I finish my cost calculator, but let’s review the considerations:

On average, how many labor hours will you save per installation by having your own fully stocked truck at your shop?
What is the value of flexing around your customers’ needs rather than forcing them to flex around yours?
What is the advertising value of a professional-looking truck with your graphics? What message are you sending?
How much more new business would you bring in if surveys were tackled the same day as the inquiry?