How to rent gear properly?

[Patryk_Rebisz]

I'm about to rent out my lighting gear for a month to a friend to shoot a feature he's DPs and i'm wondering what would be the best way to protect myself. Yes, i know about certificate of insurance by the production company made out in my name but i was wondering from people who have the experience of having to get money back for broken/lost gear how it works. Is it painless experience? How should i prep myself to make it more painless?

 

[Grahamrobbins5]

unfortunately there isn't a really good way to protect yourself, if the gear is in your name financially you are responsible for it. Dont sign for something you cant pay for if you are personally signing. Most production companies have an LLC and a person from the company is signing on behalf of the company. That way if gear gets broken, its not the individual person who is liable for it, it is just the company. An LLC take liability away from the individual and puts it into the "company" as if it is its own thing.

If you don't have an LLC or SCorp already set up its probably to late to do so without costing you an arm and a leg, then unfortunately someone is going to have to put the gear in their name, and at the end of the day if equipment gets trashed, and everyone on the production heads to the hills whoever's name is on the paper is footing the bill and dealing with insurance.

If there is L@D "loss and damages" to the equipment when you return it the rental company will simply send you an email telling you what it will cost to replace or fix the gear. You can obviously plead your case but they have the legal upper hand, because even with pre existing damage you are suppose to tell them about it before it leaves the rental house onto your shoot. The rental company will expect a check from you for the damages. This is the sucky part... then after you have paid you can deal with whatever production insurance company you pulled insurance through and try to get some of that money back. Yes I said Try, production insurance is normally really sketchy and the companies themselves can weasle there way out of paying for things very easily. Its an unfortunate reality.

I recently shot a car commercial where we used a camera crane car, The rental alone is 10k for a day, the car is valued at over 1 million. If we had damaged that car it would have bankrupt the production company, while they waited for insurance to reimburse them....

Cheers,

Graham Robbins

 

[paulears]

I think the OP wants to hire out his equipment, so is worried about the loss to him?

Here in the UK, I look after an association of people who all own and operate a popular brand of lighting controller - very popular with individuals, but less so with the bi hire companies. We had the idea to all join and list or equipment so if we were not using it, we could hire it out. The search for insurance was wasted. The circumstances of an occasional rental were deemed to be a bad risk - so what has happened to us is that we are mainly sub-hiring to each other, rather than strangers we don't know. As we use the equipment ourselves, losing it or getting it damaged would impact on us strongly - so we are wary of dry hire to people we don't know. The usual problem is that the hirer signs to say they will be responsible for loss or damage, and must be insured - but few admit they are not insured, or don't have any funds. I tend to do a credit check to add a bit more background, but then the hire is a risk. One large 'real' hire company near me delivered over £100,000 of equipment, only to have it stolen from the venue when somebody left a door open overnight. He had insurance, but discovered one exclusion was where it was considered a 'walk-in' theft - this is not burglary, and wasn't covered by his insurance. The hirer was 19 and had no real income. In the end they were lucky and the venue's own insurance did cover the loss because a member of staff had been negligent in securing the premises.

I now only hire what I can afford to lose - and when the hirer is known to me. Just too risky otherwise!

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

I'm looking for suggestions how to go about it. ON one hand the guy is trusted - on the other i know very well he wouldn't be bale to afford $45k price tag if the gear went missing...