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 utilisation 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.
