“We’re out that week.”
Are you, though?
This is a five-minute walk through a real rental yard — two branches outside Sacramento, 46 machines, ten months of history and a live board with next week already on it. Open each screen and see for yourself. You do not need to talk to anyone.
Log in first
One shared demo account. Nothing you do here affects anything real — the data resets every night.
demo@yardline.app · demo1234Open the demo →
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Start with what is standing still
Most rental screens tell you what is out. The interesting half is the other one — because a machine on the yard is a machine paying insurance, tax and rent while earning nothing.
Look at: 16 of 46 machines out, 42.7% utilisation over ninety days, and beside it 2 machines that have not left the yard once in that time. And the red line: 1 machine is promised twice. That is the one that gets found on delivery morning, with the truck already loading. The board catches it on every page load, not on a report somebody runs monthly. Open Today → -
Now answer the phone
This is the screen the product exists for. Somebody wants a machine, from a date, for a stretch. Instead of yes or no, you get ranked ways to say yes — and each one carries what it costs you.
On the availability screen choose
On the yard: two are free where the customer wants them. Nothing to move, nothing to give away. Other yard: three more at Riverside, about 14 miles. The engine checks they are free for the road time in both directions too — a machine that is only free for the hire itself cannot actually get there. Bigger machine: a 5,000lb at the 4,000lb rate. It says −$210.00 margin, because on its own rate that fortnight would have earned $1,260. The tool does not quietly hand you the bigger machine. It prices the decision. Open Can we do it? →4,000lb rough terrain forklift, out ofNorthgate, for about a fortnight starting next week. -
The price works itself out
Rental is not days × rate. Every class has a day, a week and a month rate, and a hire should be charged the cheapest legitimate combination of the three. Look at the panel on the right of the same screen: twelve days comes out as 2 weeks, $1,050 — and underneath, “12 days fell into the weekly, so there are 2 days in hand at no extra charge.”
Hire Charged as Total Day rates 3 days 1 week $285 $285 5 days 1 week — 2 days in hand $285 $475 9 days 1 week + 2 days $475 $855 26 days 1 month — 2 days in hand $760 $2,470 60 days 2 months + 1 week $1,805 $5,700 Five days must not cost more than a week. If it would, the right charge is one week and the customer keeps it for the other two days. Your counter already knows this and fixes it by hand. And when the machine comes back early or late, the line reprices itself on the days it was actually out.
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Look at the board, and at what it refuses
Units down, days across. Green is earning; the pale cells are not. The hatched bands are turnaround — wash, fuel, inspect — drawn separately on purpose, because “back Monday, ready Tuesday evening” is a fact you can trade on when somebody only needs it Wednesday.
Find the red-outlined bar. Two customers, one serial number, overlapping dates. Separately, a second machine has a hire starting before it has been checked in and prepped — reported apart, because a squeeze is not a broken promise.Then try to create one yourself. Open any ticket, add a machine, and pick from the dropdown: it only offers machines that can actually take those dates. The server refuses the rest — it does not warn you and let you carry on.
Open the board → -
Your customer tells you — and you get to say no
Every customer gets a link, no account, showing their own machines and what each has run up so far. Two buttons: keep it longer, or come and get it. Both arrive here as a request.
Three are waiting. Two you can grant in one click, and the extension reprices itself — nineteen days falls into the monthly, $930 more than before. The third one you cannot. “SL-1002 is already promised to Cornerstone Electric until Sep 13.” The Accept button is disabled. That is the whole reason a portal must raise a request rather than move the date: the customer cannot see that booking, and would have assumed yes. Open the customer inbox → -
What walked away — and what to actually buy
Nobody writes down a lost sale, which is why nobody can say what to buy. One button at the counter records the ask you could not fill. Then every one of them is replayed through the availability engine over the same window, to see whether the yard really had nothing.
$2,070.00 of the work this yard turned away, it could have taken. Four of eight. The machine was at the other branch, or a size up was standing free. That is a dispatch problem, and it is the cheapest money on the page. The other four were real. Trench boxes: own 2, asked 4 times, turned away 4, worth $2,288 — flagged short 1. Only demand that genuinely could not be served counts toward buying another machine. Telling an owner to buy something they already own is how a number loses its credibility. Open Demand → -
Which machine should you sell?
Time utilisation tells you how busy a machine is. Dollar utilisation — a year of rental revenue over what the machine cost — tells you whether owning it was a good idea. The trade reckons the low-to-mid thirties is respectable, and under about twenty per cent is a machine that is not paying for itself.
This fleet: $1.94m of iron, $493.9k a year of rental revenue, 45.3% time utilisation and 25.5% dollar utilisation. Sorted worst-first, the bottom of that list is the sell list — and it is the screen owners stay on longest. Open the fleet, worst first →
What it does not do
It does not invoice. Every line is priced correctly — the ladder, and the reprice on the actual days out — but there is no invoice, no payment, and no posting to accounting. There is also no telematics or GPS feed, no online booking by customers, no half-day or hourly rental, and no truck routing for transfers. If invoicing is the thing you are shopping for, this is not it, and I would rather you knew that from a web page than from a call.
Opening for sign-up soon
Shows real availability across yards and which machines to sell or buy. The system above is finished and running as a demonstration; sign-up opens here, with a 7-day free trial, as soon as payments for it are switched on.
Email me when it opens