Go BottomRisk of renting out my L35
 | Petrops
Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 33 Massachusetts 
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2003-05-21 55235
I have discovered that there are some serious advantages to considering my tractor ownership to be a small business. Many of these are in fact tax advantages such as impressive depreciation of the tractor and any associated equipment (including a vehicle for towing which is fully depreciated over 3 years!). I have had people approach me to ask if they can rent the rig, and of course I am asked to dig a hole or two now and again. I am concerned with 2 issues here: Liability and damage.
Does anyone have any experience / ideas on how to manage the liabiility of renting (or even lending) equipment or of doing small jobs for people?
Anyone care to comment (lecture if you must) on the risk of damage to equipment when it is operated by others? (I would expect to rent to only people who have indicated / proven some experience in running a backhoe).
Thanks
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| toddman
Join Date: Posts: 1
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2003-05-21 55287
If you are going to run it like a business do just that. Buy yourself some liability insurance and make everybody signg a release when renting your equipment. Better yet talk to an attorney. Spend a few dollars now and maybe save alot in the long run. Just my opinion. Not an experts opinion though.
Good Luck
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 | Murf
Join Date: Dec 1999 Posts: 7249 Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada 
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2003-05-21 55292
Petrops, why not get the best of both worlds... get contractor's insurance and rent out your machine complete with you as an operator.
That way you get all the write-offs but none of the risk of letting others touch your equipment.
Having a yard full of iron myself this was a problem that arose regularly for me. Anyone who even remotely knew me, let alone geuine friends, neighbours, and worst of all, relatives, would want to borrow a peice of equipment to do something or another. At first I tried to be subtle about it, saying something like "You couldn't even get it home, you don't have anything that will carry it." That inevitably led to "Well you bring it over then." and when I said I was busy I got the "That's OK, I'll just use one of your trucks." This wasn't working very well at all.
My dealer gave me the solution. Tell everybody that the equipment is covered by a Contractor's Liability Policy, which it is, that forbids anyone who is not an employee and therefore named on the policy, from touching the equipment.
From there, "I won't charge you the normal rates of course, I'll give you a big discount, do you want an estimate before I send the crew over, or should I just have them keep track of the time and send you an invoice afterwards." was a very short, easy jump. This turned out to be an excellent idea and worked very well, most people were VERY understanding as soon as the word liability came up. My brother-in-law thought differently, mind you he always does, and got really steamed, he didn't talk to me for nearly two years except to tell me how much it cost him to pay someone to do the work that I should have lent him the eqipment to do himself!!! Unfortunately for me, two years later I bought a place down south, and as soon as the weather turned cold up here, he quickly got over this terrible defect in my character, LOL.
Best of luck. ....
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