Equipment rental FAQ

No. Every listing, specification and photo is public, and you do not need an account to send an enquiry either — the form asks for your name, company, phone, email and hire dates so the equipment owner can reply to you. An account is only needed if you want to list your own machines as a supplier.

No. Browsing is free, sending an enquiry is free, and listing equipment is free. There is no commission on the hire, no lead fee, no listing fee and no paid placement. We do not take a cut of what you agree with the supplier, and we never see your payment — you pay the equipment owner directly on their own invoice.

Find the machine in the marketplace, open the listing and send an enquiry with your site location and hire dates. It goes to the company that owns that machine, and they reply to you directly to confirm availability, rate and terms.

MRM is not in that conversation. We do not set the rate, we are not a party to the rental contract, and we cannot promise that a supplier replies or how quickly — that is their decision, exactly as it would be if you had phoned them yourself.

No. Suppliers register themselves and control their own listings — the rates, photos, specifications and availability you see are entered by the equipment owner and are not checked by us. We are not a broker, we do not inspect fleets and we do not take up references.

So do the checks yourself, the same ones you would run on any rental company you found through a search: trade licence in the company's legal name, the third-party inspection certificate for the specific machine, and proof of insurance. Ask for them before the machine is loaded, not after it arrives.

Excavators, mobile cranes, aerial work platforms (boom lifts and scissor lifts), telehandlers and forklifts, generators, bulldozers and wheel loaders, compactors, dump trucks and air compressors.

The catalogue reflects what registered suppliers have actually posted, so a category can be thin or empty at any moment. If nothing listed matches what you need, post a request describing the machine, the dates and the site — registered suppliers can see requests posted there and reply to the ones they are able to cover.

Create a supplier account, complete the company profile with your legal name, trade licence and contact details, then add machines from the dashboard with your own photos, specifications and rates. Listings go live immediately and you can edit or remove them at any time.

It is free and non-exclusive. Enquiries go straight to you with the contractor's phone and email on them — there is no queue in the middle and nothing is sold back to you. List your equipment.

The owner of the machine quotes it, and that quotation is the only real number. We do not publish an excavator rate because there is no single rate — the same job description can be quoted very differently by two yards on the same day.

What actually moves it: operating weight and class, because a 1.5 t micro squeezing into a villa plot and a 30 t tracked machine on bulk earthworks are different markets; hire duration, since a month is priced on a different basis from a few days; low-bed transport in and out, which is normally charged separately in both directions; whether you need an operator, fuel and a banksman; attachments such as a breaker, auger, grab or compaction plate, which are usually priced on top of the base machine; and access, ground conditions and season.

Send the same scope, dates and exact site address to two or three owners and compare the quotations line by line — transport, attachments, minimum hire and off-hire terms included — rather than comparing headline day rates.

Again, the crane owner quotes it. We publish no crane rates.

The cost drivers are capacity at radius rather than headline tonnage — the weight of your heaviest lift at the distance and height it has to reach is what decides which crane can do the job at all; mobilisation and demobilisation, which for a large all-terrain means counterweight and boom sections arriving on their own trailers; the crew, meaning operator, riggers and often a lift supervisor; whether the crane is working or on standby; and how long it is committed to your site.

Approvals add both cost and lead time. A tower crane in Dubai needs a DCAA no-objection certificate where it breaches aviation height limits, and municipality or Civil Defence sign-off applies on some sites. Give each crane owner the lift study, or at minimum the load weight, radius and hook height, and ask them to price mobilisation as a separate line.

Equipment hire in the UAE is a standard-rated supply, so a VAT-registered supplier adds 5% and must issue a tax invoice showing their TRN. Ask whether a quoted rate is inclusive or exclusive of VAT before you compare two quotations, because that alone can flip which one is cheaper.

Check the TRN actually appears on the invoice — you cannot recover input tax against an invoice that does not carry one. Not every small supplier is VAT-registered; registration follows turnover thresholds, so a smaller yard may legitimately invoice you without VAT.

Each owner sets their own minimum. It is not a platform setting and MRM does not impose one, so confirm it in writing before you build the machine into your programme.

Expect it to be longer for anything that has to be mobilised. A machine that arrives on a low-bed, or a crane that needs rigging on site, carries fixed transport and set-up cost that a very short hire cannot absorb, which is why short hires on those machines are often refused or priced as if they were longer. Ask three things: what the minimum is, whether a hire day means a calendar day or a working day, and how Fridays, weekends and public holidays are counted.

Many suppliers deliver, but transport is normally a separate charge in each direction and it is quoted by the supplier, not by us.

Give the exact location, not just the emirate. A delivery into JAFZA, KIZAD or another free zone follows that zone's own gate and pass procedure and its own customs jurisdiction; an Abu Dhabi site served from a Dubai yard crosses an emirate boundary; and many developments and contractor-run sites require a gate pass, a site induction and a booked delivery window before a low-bed is allowed through. Confirm who arranges any permit for an oversized or overweight load, and who carries the cost if the truck is held waiting at the gate.

Some suppliers wet-hire, meaning the machine comes with their operator. Some dry-hire only, meaning you get the machine and supply your own operator. It is the owner's commercial choice, not a setting on this site, so establish which it is in the quotation rather than assuming.

On wet hire, ask what the operator's day covers in hours, how overtime and Friday or public-holiday working are charged, and who carries the operator's transport and accommodation. On dry hire, the operator's competence, certification and site induction are entirely yours, and so is anything the operator does with the machine.

On most contractor-run sites in Dubai and Abu Dhabi the main contractor's HSE plan requires the MEWP operator to hold a valid card for the correct category — 1b for a static boom, 3a for a mobile vertical or scissor lift, 3b for a mobile boom — plus a full-body harness and a lanyard when working from a boom.

Cards are issued by training bodies, not by the equipment owner, and a dry hire does not include an operator or a card. Confirm what the site demands before delivery, because a lift standing idle waiting for a certified operator is still on hire and still being charged. More detail: IPAF PAL card requirements for Dubai sites.

Ask, and get the answer in writing before the machine moves. Owners generally insure their own plant, but what a policy covers once the machine is hired out varies, and many hire agreements put damage, theft and third-party liability on the hirer for the whole time the machine is in your possession.

Specifically: what the excess is and who pays it, whether operator error, overturning or damage caused by an untrained operator is excluded, whether cover extends to the emirate and the type of site you are working on, and whether the machine is covered while it is on the trailer. If the answer is that you must insure it, price that before you accept the rate.

Often, yes. A security deposit or an advance is normal UAE practice for a new account, and both the amount and the form are the owner's decision — some take a cheque, some want the first period paid in advance, and some release a machine to a company customer against a signed quotation or a purchase order instead of any cash at all.

If you hand over a cheque, check the date, the drawer's name and the payee before it leaves your hand, and take a receipt that states what the deposit secures and when it is returned. If you are asked to pay a personal account rather than the company's, stop and re-check who you are actually dealing with.

An LPO — local purchase order — is the hirer's own numbered order document confirming scope, rate, hire period and payment terms, issued to the supplier before the machine is released. Most UAE contractors and effectively all government and free-zone entities work this way, and many suppliers will not release equipment to a new company account without one.

If you are a small business with no LPO system, a countersigned quotation does the same job. The point is a written, dated document both sides have agreed, carrying the rate, the hire period, transport, the minimum hire and the payment terms. A WhatsApp thread is not that document.

Before the machine leaves the yard: the trade licence in the company's legal name, still in date and with an activity that actually covers equipment rental; the third-party inspection (TPI) certificate for that specific machine, matched by serial number and not expired; the insurance certificate; and, on a wet hire, the operator's certification.

On delivery, photograph the machine from every side and record the hour meter and fuel level on the delivery note before you sign it. That signed note is the baseline the off-hire condition report will be judged against, and it is the cheapest ten minutes of the whole hire.

Hire normally runs until you formally off-hire the machine, not from the day you stop using it. A machine sitting idle in a corner of your site is still on charge.

Give notice in writing — email is fine — with the date you want the hire to end, and keep the acknowledgement or off-hire reference. Agree who collects and when, because collection can take days after your notice. Establish upfront how much notice the agreement requires, whether the clock stops on your notice date or on physical collection, and what happens to charges on days the machine is broken down. That breakdown clause is the one most often missing from a quotation, and the one worth asking for in writing.

Not without telling the owner first. Hire agreements normally tie a machine to the site address you gave, insurance cover can be written around that location, and moving it yourself on the wrong trailer or without the right permit puts the liability squarely on you.

Crossing an emirate boundary, or moving a machine in or out of a free zone, can also change the gate-pass and customs position for the equipment. Ask the owner to arrange the transfer and to confirm the new location in writing.

Yes, and they change how many productive hours you get from a machine you are paying for by the week or month. The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation applies a midday break through the summer that stops work in direct sunlight and in open air for a set afternoon window; the dates and the window are announced each year, so check the current decision rather than last season's.

Ramadan shortens the working day, and some communities and developments restrict noisy work, night deliveries and low-bed movements. Build that into the hire period you ask for at quotation stage. It is much harder to argue after the fact that the programme slipped for reasons the calendar told you about in advance.