Sources

Live listed rental rates on DOZR's Houston, Dallas and Austin category pages, which aggregate offers from dozens of local rental companies and publish day, week and 4-week prices per equipment class. This is the primary source for every rate band on the site, and the only one we found that is both Texas-specific and per-class.

National and per-metro averages used to cross-check the listing data and to derive the metro price tiers.

Advertised "starting at" rates, which sit consistently at the low end of what the listing data shows actually gets invoiced. Used to sanity-check the bottom of each band, never to set the top.

How the crane market actually quotes: bare rental priced monthly for larger machines, operated and maintained billed hourly against a minimum, with mobilization charged separately each way. This is the basis for treating cranes as quote-only.

Source for the environmental fee: 2.00% of the service charge, capped at $99, and described in their own terms as not a government-mandated charge.

Rental protection plan published at 15% of gross rental charges.

Independently publishes the same 15.00% of gross rental charges, which is why we treat 15% as the industry figure rather than one company's policy.

Transportation surcharge indexed monthly to the US DOE national average on-highway diesel price. Their published worked example is an 8.5% variable component with an $8.50 minimum.

State rate 6.25% plus local rates up to 2.00%. All twenty cities on this site are at the 8.25% ceiling.

Texas Emissions Reduction Plan surcharge of 1.5% on the sale, lease or rental of off-road heavy-duty diesel equipment of 50 horsepower or more, collected alongside sales tax and in addition to it. Reduced from 2% by HB 7 effective 1 September 2015. This is Texas-specific and almost universally omitted by rental price guides.

Two Texas-specific wrinkles: equipment rented WITH an operator and billed as a single charge is generally not a taxable rental of tangible personal property, and equipment that qualifies as a motor vehicle may fall under Motor Vehicle Rental Tax instead of sales tax. Both are flagged for professional review before we publish a rate.

Construction-industry requirements for aerial lifts.

Forklift operator training, evaluation and the three-year re-evaluation requirement.

Operator certification and the employer evaluation duty added by the 2018 final rule.

A92.22 (safe use) and A92.24 (training) are the standards that introduced the written risk assessment, the site survey and the supervisor training requirement.