You rent out a mini digger for one hundred euros a day. A contractor wants it for a full working week, but complains that five hundred euros is too much because the machine will stand idle on Wednesday while he is on another job. Do you give a discount, or do you hold on to your daily rate? Building your rental rates per day, week and month properly takes a fixed method of calculation that prevents gaps in your own planning and keeps the business customer coming back.
In short: In equipment rental, never work with a linear price (seven times the daily rate makes a weekly rate). Use a fixed tiered scale, such as the widely used three-day rule: a week costs three or four times the daily rate, and a month costs three times the weekly rate. That encourages longer rental periods and lowers your own handling costs.
A tiered rate in rental is a price structure in which the average price per day falls the longer the customer keeps the equipment for one continuous period.
Worked example: the three-day rule for rentals
Most successful rental businesses work with some version of the three-day rule. Once you have calculated a solid basic daily rate from depreciation, maintenance and margin, the rest of your prices follow from it automatically. The table below shows how that works for a fictional machine with a daily rate of one hundred euros.
| Rental period | Calculation | Price in this example | Average price per day |
| Day (24 hours) | 1x the daily rate | € 100 | € 100 |
| Weekend (Sat-Sun) | 1.5x the daily rate | € 150 | € 75 |
| Working week (Mon-Fri) | 3x or 4x the daily rate | € 300 or € 400 | € 60 to € 80 |
| Week (7 days) | Same as the working week | € 300 or € 400 | € 43 to € 57 |
| Month (4 weeks) | 3x the weekly rate | € 900 | € 32 |
This structure protects your return. If you rent out a plate compactor for one day, you spend time drawing up the contract, handing it over, taking it back, hosing it down and doing the paperwork. Rent that same compactor to a road builder for a whole month and you do that work exactly once. Your internal costs fall, and you pass that advantage on as a lower monthly rate.
The weekend problem: do you charge for Saturday and Sunday?
The weekend always causes discussion in rental. It comes from the clash between two completely different groups of customers. A landscaper or contractor works Monday to Friday. On Saturday and Sunday the machine stands idle behind a site fence. A private DIYer works only at the weekend and collects the machine on Saturday morning.
You solve this by making your weekly rate equal to your working-week rate. A contractor who hires from Monday to Friday pays 300 euros in the example above. If he keeps the machine until Sunday, the price stays 300 euros. In commercial construction, Sunday is a day of rest.
For private customers you apply a firm weekend rate. Often that is one and a half times the daily rate, from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. It covers the extra wear of two days of use, but gives the private customer room to collect and return the machine at a quiet moment before and after the weekend. That keeps your machine rental planning clean and prevents a queue at your counter at 17:00 on Saturday.
When a fixed scale does not work
This declining scale works perfectly for machines, trailers and large tools. There are situations, however, in which you should drop the method straight away.
For equipment with extreme, directly measurable wear, a fixed weekly price works against you. Think of diamond core bits, floor sanders or milling blades. A customer can wear a bit out completely in three days. For this type of tool you charge a very low basic rent for the machine itself, and bill the actual consumption afterwards per millimetre or per hour used.
The scale is also unsuitable for event rental. If you rent out temporary power supplies or lighting for a festival that lasts a single Saturday, the organiser often hires from Thursday to Monday because of the build-up and break-down. In party rental you charge by days of use rather than days of possession, otherwise you price yourself out of the market immediately.
How to start this week
Bring structure to your price list today with these five steps.
Take your current price list and pick one machine as your benchmark, for example your most rented mini digger.- Set your absolute basic daily rate and multiply it by 3 (or 3.5) to fix your weekly rate.
- State clearly in your terms that a weekend runs from Friday afternoon to Monday morning, for a fixed factor of 1.5 times the daily rate.
- Enter these automatic pricing rules in your software, so the person at the counter no longer has to calculate or negotiate.
- In our reservation system for construction equipment you set these rules once; as soon as the customer selects a rental period of thirteen days, Bookedin automatically calculates the price of one week plus the days of the new week, including the deposit that is held.
A tight structure in your rental rates per day, week and month brings calm to the counter. You no longer have to negotiate a "good price" with a sole trader who keeps an aerial platform a little longer. You simply point to your scale, collect the right amount in advance, and look with peace of mind at a planning that fills itself with profitable jobs.
Last checked on 8 October 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Professional rental businesses rarely charge seven times the daily rate for a week. The standard is the three-day rule or the four-day rule. If your daily rate is 100 euros, the weekly rate is 300 or 400 euros. That compensates the customer for days the machine stands idle and covers your one-off internal costs per rental.
If a contractor leaves a machine on site for a full week (seven days), you almost never charge for the Sunday. In pricing, a week is usually treated as a working week of five days. The machine stands safely idle and has already earned its return for that week in those five days.
Set this out in your general terms and conditions in advance. Usually you charge the actual rental period at the more expensive weekly or daily rate. If a customer books a monthly rate but hands the machine back after two weeks, you simply charge two separate weeks. The price advantage of the monthly rate lapses.
For most machines you build normal wear into the basic daily rate. For specific consumables such as diamond core bits, chisels or saw blades you split it. You charge a low rent for the machine and measure the millimetres worn away on return, so you can invoice the customer for exactly what was used.
A half-day is usually a period of four hours, for example from 08:00 to 12:00 or from 13:00 to 17:00. The rate for a half-day is often 60 to 70 per cent of a full daily rate, because it is hard to rent the machine out profitably a second time for the rest of the day.
The weekly rate is already a substantial tiered discount compared with the daily rate. Large regular customers sometimes get an extra percentage off (for example 10 per cent on the whole invoice) because of their volume. Just make sure that discount does not eat into your depreciation margin on heavy equipment.
Any other questions? You can always email us at info@bookedin.nl.
