Heavy equipment rental has evolved from a last-minute stopgap into a valuable on-demand tool. You can scale up or pivot between jobs without buying, storing, or maintaining machines that get use only a few weeks a year. The best part is how quickly you can match a task to the exact machine and have it delivered directly to your site.
Marketplaces such as BigRentz aggregate nationwide fleets—everything from scissor lifts to cranes—and coordinate drop-offs, pickups, and multi-item orders through a single point of contact, which is especially helpful if you’re juggling multiple trades and timelines on one project. (BigRentz). This can help get a big job fast when you don’t have the equipment needed already. Here’s a list of many equipment types people find valuable to rent:
Lifts are often the gateway to rental because they solve the everyday problem of safe, repeatable work at height. Scissor lifts shine when you need a stable platform for two people and tools, with electric models sized for interior work and rough-terrain variants that add four-wheel drive and chunky tires for outdoor slabs and dirt. BigRentz lists electric scissor lifts starting in the teens of feet for tight interiors and rough-terrain models reaching 32 feet and beyond; their pricing pages show that daily and weekly rates scale with height and capability, which makes it straightforward to right-size the platform for a punch-list day or a long finish-work run.
If your task involves reaching over obstacles, boom lifts are the better fit: articulated “knuckle” booms snake around lines, awnings, or tree limbs, while telescopic booms cover long, straight reaches. BigRentz’s guide pages explain the difference clearly—booms lift a worker to position, not pallets—so you can choose lift type based on the job rather than the jargon. Whatever you rent, remember that aerial-lift work is regulated; OSHA requires training and fall-protection practices that your crew should build into the plan. (BigRentz)
Forklifts occupy the middle ground between vertical access and material movement. Warehouse-style electrics are perfect for slab floors and racking, while rough-terrain telehandlers bring big tires, long booms, and higher ground clearance to jobsites. BigRentz offers both categories and publishes selection guides that break down capacities, mast heights, and attachments such as forks, buckets, and work platforms. From a compliance perspective, powered industrial trucks are tightly governed: OSHA’s 1910.178 standard requires every operator to be trained and evaluated by a qualified person, with refresher training when conditions change or performance issues arise. Treating operator certification as part of the rental checklist—just like confirming delivery and insurance—keeps you on schedule and on the right side of the rules. (BigRentz)
Earth-moving rentals are where you feel the full benefit of matching machine to task. A skid steer or compact track loader handles tight, multipurpose work—grading, brush, pallets—while mini-excavators thread between utilities and foundations with surgical precision. Heavier excavators, bobcats, dozers, and backhoes come in when you need production digging, trenching, or site prep. BigRentz helps you understand the trade-offs, and even gives a ballpark pricing that helps you build a budget: a small walk-behind trencher may run under a couple hundred dollars per day, while a heavy excavator can approach a thousand dollars per day, with weekly/monthly rates dropping the per-day cost as jobs stretch out. That transparency lets you compare “two smaller machines for a week” versus “one larger machine for three days” and pick the path that clears your critical path fastest. (BigRentz)
Crane rental brings its own vocabulary, but the decision tree is manageable if you think in terms of mobility and capacity. Mobile cranes—carry deck, truck-mounted, all-terrain, and crawlers—are built to move around a job and set up quickly; crawlers trade road speed for tremendous off-road stability, while all-terrains bridge highway travel and rough sites. Stationary or fixed cranes cover long projects in one location, from bridge cranes inside plants to tower or hammerhead cranes on high-rise jobs. BigRentz’s crane portal summarizes those families and, in local FAQ pages and cost guides, gives order-of-magnitude pricing that ranges from a few hundred dollars per day for small mobile units to five figures per month for tower cranes—numbers that are useful for early estimating before you request a job-specific quote. Regional crane houses publish similar lineups and capacity ranges, which can help you sanity-check your pick before you lock dates. (BigRentz)
Air compressors are the unsung heroes of rental because they keep nailers firing, blast pots running, and tools like pavement breakers and rock drills on task. Towable diesel units in the 185–400+ CFM range are common on sites because they’ll power multiple tools, run all day on a tank, and park behind a pickup; instrument-quality machines are available when you need dryer air for coatings or process work. National rental catalogs show typical specs—150 psi working pressure and 350–450 CFM for a mid-size road-tow unit—and larger fleets carry compressors up to 1,600 CFM when your job demands it. Because compressors are often the heart of a small staging area, ask your supplier for the correct hose diameters, moisture control, and tool compatibility so you don’t bottleneck a crew with a mismatched setup. (United Rentals)
Two final planning notes save headaches. First, logistics matter as much as the machine. One of BigRentz’s quiet superpowers is its supplier network; by brokering across thousands of partners, they can source multiple units to one address and sequence deliveries and pickups so you’re not babysitting equipment between tasks. Second, safety and training should ride alongside the PO. OSHA’s aerial-lift rules and forklift standard aren’t fine print; they’re central to how you schedule and staff the work. Baking operator certification, PPE, and site controls into your rental plan protects your people, your timeline, and your budget. With those pieces in place, heavy equipment rental becomes a productivity lever rather than an emergency fix—exactly what it should be.