ABSTRACT
The information, rates and prices included in this section are calculated examples of actual owning and operating costs of a range of construction plant and equipment. To an extent they will serve as a guide to prevailing commercial plant hire rates, but be aware that many factors will influence actual hire rates. For example, rates could be lower because of long-term hire, use of older or second hand machines, low market demands/loss leaders, easy tasks or sites near to the depot. Rates could be higher due to short-term hire, high production demands, low utilization factors, specialist operations, restricted working and restricted accessibility problems, high profit or overhead demands and finance fluctuations. The use factors will mean a hired machine may not be used productively for each hour on site, it is therefore up to the estimator to allow for reasonable outputs in his unit rate calculations.
