In this article
Read this as a checklist, not as advice
This describes what equipment-only rental agreements commonly address in this trade. It is not legal advice, and nothing here should go into a contract without a lawyer in your jurisdiction reading it. Rental law, consumer protection and liability rules vary enormously by country and by state.
What follows is useful for a different purpose: knowing which questions your paperwork and your process should have answers to, before a job goes wrong and you find out which one you missed.
The clauses that usually appear
| Area | What it typically settles | Where it bites |
|---|---|---|
| Hire period | When the rental starts and ends, and what counts as a late return. | A client who treats collection day as flexible while the gear is booked for the next job. |
| Condition | The state the gear left in and the state it must come back in. | Damage nobody photographed, argued about a week later. |
| Liability | Who carries the risk while the gear is off site. | Loss, theft and damage during the hire. |
| Insurance | What cover the hirer must hold and evidence of it. | A claim the hirer assumed you had covered. |
| Deposit | What is held, when it is taken and what releases it. | A hold that was never actually placed. |
| Use | Who may operate the gear and in what conditions. | Outdoor use, rigging and power, where safety and cover interact. |
| Subhire | Whether the hirer may pass the gear on. | Your gear on a third party job you never agreed to. |
The deposit is a process, not a clause
A security deposit only works if it is actually taken, actually held and actually released. The common failure is not the wording. It is a deposit that was agreed in an email, never placed, and then remembered when something came back broken.
Decide when it is taken, what releases it, and how long after return the release happens. Then make that part of the workflow rather than something a person has to remember on a Friday afternoon.
Condition evidence beats condition clauses
The strongest position in a damage dispute is not a well-drafted clause. It is a record of what went out, when, in what state, and what came back.
Scanning serialized units at checkout and return, noting condition at both ends, and keeping that attached to the job gives you a timeline. Most disputes end quickly when there is one, and drag on for weeks when there is not.
Say what the client is responsible for operationally
The last one is the most useful and the most often missing. A hirer who does not know how to reach you at nine on a Saturday will improvise, and improvising with your gear is how it comes back broken.
- Who is allowed to operate the gear, and whether any of it needs a competent person.
- Power requirements, and what the client must provide.
- Rigging and working at height, where these apply.
- Transport and how the gear must be secured.
- What to do when something fails on site, and who to call.
Keep the terms attached to the document the client approved
Terms that live in a separate PDF sent once, months ago, are terms you will struggle to point at later. The useful pattern is that the client approves a specific quote revision, and the terms that applied at that moment are part of that record.
Flightcase keeps dry rental as its own workflow with a requirements step and security holds, and quote approval binds to the exact revision the client signed rather than to whatever the document says today.
FAQ
Is dry hire the same as a dry rental?
Should I always take a security deposit on dry hire?
Do I need a lawyer to write a rental agreement?
What is the most useful thing to fix first?
Put this into the system you actually run on
Rates, replacement values, deposits and subrental costs are only useful when they live where the quote is built. Start free, or bring a real job to a walkthrough.