What is the difference between dry hire and wet hire?
Wet hire includes machinery and an operator, whilst dry hire provides the machinery only for you to operate yourself.
What does wet hire mean?
When hiring equipment on wet hire it will include an operator to operate the machine for you. As you could imagine, this will increase the cost of the hire as you will be paying for the operators time as well as the machine hire, travel to site and fuel costs while on site.
What does dry hire mean?
When hiring equipment on dry hire it will not include an operator to operate the machine for you. This hire option is significantly cheaper than wet hire as you don't need to pay for the operators time at your site.
The benefits of dry hire vs wet hire
With “Wet Hire" you’re paying for a service plus the skill and experience the operator has developed over a number of years. Anyone can drive a car, for an example, but there are different levels of competence - which is also the same with machinery! The skill and experience of the operator is often key to the success and quality of the finished project. With DIY operators and weekenders we often find that people need to use an excavator or a bobcat for a small project and they "Dry Hire" to cut costs, so they rent the machine and do it themselves.