Boom Lift Financing for General Contractors

You signed the contract, the schedule is set, and the steel is going up Monday. The boom you need is sitting at a dealer 40 miles away. The question is whether your financing closes before the crew runs out of work they can do from the ground. General contractors do not have a lot of patience for a slow underwrite, and we do not run a slow underwrite.

GCs are some of the most versatile boom buyers in the market. Commercial construction, tenant improvement work, tilt-up and pre-cast, bridge and infrastructure, the machine list changes by job but the need stays constant: reliable reach, fast funding, and a payment structure that does not create a cash-flow problem in the gap between contract start and first draw.

We fund straight telescopic booms, articulating knuckle booms, and rough-terrain units for exterior work. New from the dealer, used from a rental fleet, private-party auction, it all works the same way: application plus three months of statements, decision in a day, funded in a week or two.

Commercial GCs typically need boom reach in the 60-to-85-foot range for multi-story core and shell work, curtain-wall installation, mechanical rough-in on upper floors, and exterior facade work. A 80-foot diesel telescopic covers most of the envelope on a five-to-seven story building. Larger projects, twelve stories and up, push you into 100-foot-plus territory where the machine costs more but the alternative is a rented unit at a daily rate that adds up fast over a six-month job.

GCs doing ground-up residential or light commercial often run smaller units. A 45-foot articulating boom handles most residential framing and roofing-adjacent access work and costs a fraction of the larger iron. These units are also easier to move between sites, which matters when you are running multiple jobs at once.

Interior work, especially TI and renovation, favors electric articulating booms because they can operate on a finished slab without diesel exhaust in an occupied building. Narrow-chassis units fit through standard door openings, which matters in healthcare and occupied-building renovation.

General contractors have cash-flow patterns that look strange to a bank but make perfect sense to anyone who has read a construction contract. Progress draws, retainage, slow owner payments, it all shows up in the bank statements, and our underwriters know what they are looking at. We do not penalize a file because retainage held $80,000 back for 90 days.

The application is short application. Recent operating bank statements. For deals under $400,000, no tax returns, no personal financial statement, no audit. The approval comes back fast. Funding follows within roughly two weeks of the approval, which means if you apply on Monday you can have the machine on the job by the following week in most cases.

Structures that work well for GCs include the standard equipment loan with a dollar-buyout at end of term, and a boom lift lease with either a $1 buyout or a fair-market-value option depending on whether you want to own the machine outright or keep flexibility to upgrade. If you have a boom you already own free and clear, a sale-leaseback can generate working capital for the next job without selling the iron.

A new 60-foot diesel telescopic boom lists between $100,000 and $130,000 from major dealers. A used unit in the same class with 1,500 to 2,500 hours trades somewhere in the $50k–$80k band, which is often right at our $50,000 floor. Larger units, 80-foot and above, run $130,000 to $200,000 new and $80,000 to $150,000 used depending on hours and condition.

Equipment loan terms typically run 48 to 72 months. Monthly payments on a $100,000 loan over 60 months are going to depend on the rate and structure, but GCs running a unit that earns productivity on every billable hour generally find the payment easy to absorb against the labor cost the machine saves. One operator at height beats three doing the same work from ladders and scaffolding.

For GCs who are project-financing and do not want long-term ownership, refinancing an existing machine or structuring a shorter 36-month lease with a larger buyout can keep the payment higher but the commitment shorter. We work both ends depending on where you want the flexibility.

The GCs who call us most often fall into a few categories. The established mid-size contractor who rents every year and finally ran the math and decided owning makes more sense. The growing company that won a larger contract than usual and needs to add capacity without straining the credit line. The contractor who bought a machine years ago, has it paid down significantly, and wants to pull equity out while keeping the unit on the job.

We also work with startup contractors and GCs coming off a rough credit year. B and C credit programs are part of what we do, not an exception. The underwrite leans on cash flow from the bank statements, not on a perfect score.

If you are a licensed GC with active contracts and three months of statements showing real revenue, you have a strong chance of getting funded with us even if your personal credit has some history. That is a practical reality of how construction businesses operate, and we underwrite accordingly.

One application, three months of statements, an answer the same day. That is how it works. The boom you need is out there; we just need to close the deal before the schedule moves on without it.