We registered Capel Hire about 15yrs back. I had a lot of workshop equipment from previous business ventures. We had to be registered motor vehicle dealers to hire the trailers so we started there while we went ahead painting and signing our gear. After a few months of hiring trailers we began to see the damage, loss and general difficulties dealing with the customers.
Payment was always difficult so the first thing is you need to have credit card facilities and unless you have good sales volume this gets expensive. The next difficult thing is how do you work out general wear and tear from damage? On many occasions we just faced the cost of repair just to keep our customers happy.
On one occasion we hired our sign written Hyundai to a couple who had broken down and need a drive car. I got a call from the cops because my car was used to try to run down a cop who tried to stop it. Fortunately I was competing in the Dutton Rally at the time and all my time was recorded down to the hundredth of a second. I had a bullet proof alibi
We never got into hiring the rest of the equipment. It simply wasn't worth it. The trailers made good money because they were very basic machines with little to go wrong. Anything electrical would have had to be tested upon return and the liability issues would also have been another thing to deal with.
We only stopped hiring the trailers a couple of years back after we lost a couple and we started to travel too much to have the yard open.
Hire needs to be a professionally run business with the infrastructure to back it up.
Ps: We were leading the rally three-day Dutton Rally by Saturday night in my (now) daughter-in-law's street legal Subaru WRX. On the Sunday we were overtaken by a much faster Porsche on Wanneroo raceway. I was clocked at 235 Kph and it wasn't fast enough. We finished the rally with both of us taking home a trophy for 2nd place in a field of 80 cars. That was my first drive of a 4WD car.