Hi,

I have been approached by the Technical Director of our hire company, to review how we do business with our customers. A recent study from our sales team revealed that our customers think we are a "difficult" company to deal with, because of the checksand requirements we ask of our customers, to ensure that the hirers of our lifting equipment are suitably qualified and competent to operate it. We will generally only hire to companies who can provide proof of competence of their operators, for example CPCS or similar recognised card schemes. The reasoning behind this is to enure we have shown due dilligence and a duty of care to our customers. We run a plant training centre alongside our core business and we strongly recommend our customers to make use of the training offered, to ensure they have suitably trained operators. Our customers are telling us that they just want to hire the kit and dont need to be hassled over who is going to operate it, once on hire. Obviously it is ultimately the hirers responsibility to ensure that their own staff are adequately trained, competent etc. but if we were to relax our own company policy on operator checks, I would be interested to know what opinions my fellow forum users have as to our risk exposure would be; for example, if we hired a piece of kit to a customer, then operated by untrained personnel and there is a subsequent incident. Bit of along winded post, so apologies but would appreciate any feedback here.

As above, in actual fact as soon as it's off the truck you have no control over who uses it anyway.

In my previous role in the plant hire industry we offered the customer training and familiarisation, the machines all went out with operators manuals and we offered products such as key pads to disable the machines when they were not being used and we offered information about the importance of having trained operators. Whether they took us up on it or not was up to them but they couldn't say we didn't try.

I think that if you insist on seeing evidence of operator competence then yes you would be a bit difficult to deal with from a customer point of view and it is probably costing you hire revenue.

In my opinion some hire companies do not go far enough.

However:

Its ok to insist on seeing Joe Bloggs CPCS card, but once on site how do you know its nor Josephine Bloggs using the kit? 

I hired a floor sander for home at the end of last year and the person running through the set up again was not an issue, even though I knew how to use it.

Having to drive back home to have a passport and 2 utility bills and part with my phone number and email address did irritate me no end. (driving licence is old paper type so no picture). Made even worse as I don’t own a passport! That wasted several hours of my days hire! Offered to pay large deposit but no. Surly just recording my car number plate would have been good enough. Probably will work harder with hand tools in future rather than hire, as first hire shop let me down, so I ended up wasting a day.

If you’re a home owner with no driving licence and or passport you would not be able to hire any tools. Crackers!!!