Trailer rental software: what your yard needs to track, and how to choose
Trailer rental software: the features a yard needs, how six tools price, and when a spreadsheet or your own app fits your yard better.
Trailer rental software keeps every trailer, reservation, rental agreement and payment in one place, so you can see what’s on the lot, what’s out and what’s due back. A rental yard needs it to track each unit by plate and VIN, prevent double bookings, check insurance before release, and record condition, damage, deposits, maintenance and tolls.
This guide is for owners and managers of trailer and equipment rental yards. It covers what to track, six rental products and how they price, when a spreadsheet stops working, and when an app of your own fits better.
How we researched this: we checked each vendor’s own website in October 2026 for the features and prices below. They change often.
What features should trailer rental software have?
Whatever tool you use, a rental yard keeps the same records. Each trailer leaves the lot behind someone else’s truck with your name on its registration, so the records protect you as much as they organize you.
- Each unit. Unit number, type, plate, VIN, GPS tracker ID if you fit one, and one status: ready, reserved, out or in the shop. Toll notices arrive with a plate, not a name, so make it searchable by plate.
- Bookings. Out and back dates, checked against every other booking so no trailer is promised twice.
- Paperwork. A signed agreement, a checked license, proof of insurance and a matched hitch, all before the trailer leaves.
- Check-out and check-in. Who, when, and the condition of the tires, lights, brakes, hitch, chains and body. For machines such as skid steers, add hour-meter readings, fuel and delivery.
- Charges and deposits. Damage, late and cleaning fees, and whether the deposit was held, applied or returned.
- Maintenance. Tires, bearings, brakes, lights and state inspections, with the next due date, so a trailer that needs work isn’t booked. See what to record in an equipment maintenance log.
- Tolls and tickets. Each notice matched by plate and date to the rental that had the trailer.
If you’re setting this up yourself, in a spreadsheet or an app, these are the records and columns to start with:
| Record | What to keep | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Units | Unit number, type and size, plate, VIN, GPS tracker ID (if fitted), registration renewal date, status, lot | T-08, 7×16 enclosed, plate 4ZA-273, in the shop, Lot B |
| Customers | Name, phone, email, driver’s license expiry, insurance company, policy end date | J. Rivera, policy ends Mar 31, 2027 |
| Rentals | Rental number, unit, customer, out and back dates and times, rate (day, weekend or week), status | R-1043, Oct 9 to Oct 12, $75 a day, settled |
| Paperwork | Agreement signed, damage waiver taken or declined, license checked, insurance on file, hitch matched | All checked, waiver declined |
| Check-outs and check-ins | Who, when, tires, lights, brakes, hitch, chains, damage noted | Oct 12, 4:40 PM, Luis, new dent in rear door |
| Charges and payments | Rent, damage, late and cleaning fees, payments, refunds, deposit held, applied or returned | $225 rent, $85 damage fee from the $150 deposit, $65 refunded |
| Maintenance | Unit, work done, date, cost, next due | T-07, new tires, $380, Oct 14, next check Jan 14 |
| Tolls and tickets | Notice date, plate, date of travel, amount, rental matched, billed | Plate 4ZA-273 on Oct 10, R-1043, billed |
How do you keep track of a trailer rental, from booking to return?
Every rental follows the same cycle. Software, a spreadsheet or an app only changes how much of it you do by hand.
- Reserve. Pick the trailer type and dates, check what’s free, and take a deposit to hold it.
- Do the paperwork. Get the agreement signed, check the license and insurance, and match the hitch to the customer’s truck. Nothing leaves until all of it is done.
- Check it out. Walk around the trailer with the customer and note its condition.
- Watch the returns. Each morning, look at what’s due back today and what’s late.
- Check it in. Walk around it again and note any new damage.
- Settle up. Charge damage, late or cleaning fees, then apply or refund the deposit.
- Match tolls and tickets later. Look up each notice by plate and date, find the rental, and bill the customer.
After a damaged return, the trailer goes to the shop first, and back on the yard board as ready to rent once it’s fixed.
What kinds of trailer rental software are there?
Rental software falls into two groups, and each suits a different kind of yard. Here are six products, described from their own websites, in no particular order.
| Product | Kind | What its site highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Booqable | Online booking platform | Booking and payment online, automatic availability, deposits held on a card |
| Twice | Online booking platform | Online, phone and walk-in reservations in one system; agreements and waivers at checkout |
| Reservety | Online booking platform | Self-service pickup with lockbox or smart lock codes |
| Point of Rental | Full equipment rental software | Work orders, GPS tracking, online storefront |
| InTempo | Full equipment rental software | Quotes, contracts, invoicing on any rental cycle, maintenance |
| Quipli | Full equipment rental software | Customer portal, GPS tracking, QuickBooks Online |
Online booking platforms for rental shops
Booqable, Twice and Reservety are built around the customer’s booking: a rental website or booking page, live availability, payments, deposits and signed agreements. They suit yards that rent mostly to the public and want customers to book and pay at any hour.
- Booqable says customers can “book and pay online, 24/7,” that its automated availability means no double bookings, and that you can capture signatures on your phone during the hitch-up. It holds the deposit on the customer’s card and releases it when the trailer comes back, or captures it for damage or a missing accessory. You can mark a trailer unavailable while it’s being repaired (Booqable).
- Twice takes online bookings and logs phone and walk-in reservations in the same system. Rental agreements and liability waivers appear during checkout, security deposits are collected up front, and trailers can be routed to tire, light and brake inspections (Twice).
- Reservety is built for self-service pickup. Renters book online, sign the agreement and leave a hold on their card, and the lockbox code arrives by email once the checks are done. Smart locks with time-limited codes work too. You can require an ID check (on its Professional plan), and each return puts the trailer on the maintenance list for its check (Reservety, pricing).
Full equipment rental software
Point of Rental, InTempo and Quipli run the whole rental business: contracts, invoicing, maintenance and links to accounting. They suit equipment rental companies with a counter, a shop and contractor accounts, and they usually start with a demo.
- Point of Rental says its Elite edition suits “equipment, event, general, and specialty rental companies of all sizes.” Its site lists maintenance and work orders, GPS tracking and an online storefront (Point of Rental).
- InTempo creates quotes, reservations and contracts and sends invoices on any rental cycle. It tracks repairs and preventive maintenance and connects to accounting software such as QuickBooks (InTempo).
- Quipli was “custom built for heavy equipment and general tool rental companies.” Customers use a self-service portal, where they can also upload certificates of insurance and licenses, and its Core plan includes GPS tracking and a real-time QuickBooks Online integration (Quipli, pricing).
How much does trailer rental software cost?
Prices are hard to compare: some vendors list monthly plans, some charge per location per year, and others quote on request. Here’s what each vendor’s site showed in October 2026:
- Reservety: Starter $59 a month and Professional $99 a month, billed monthly, with a 14-day free trial (Reservety pricing).
- Twice: priced in euros at €199 a month per location, with the first location at half price, €99. Its Standard plan also takes 1.5% of each payment processed, and there’s a 14-day free trial (Twice pricing).
- Booqable: plans billed monthly or yearly, unlimited inventory and orders on every plan, and a 14-day free trial (Booqable pricing).
- Quipli: Core is $6,000 per location per year with unlimited users, and Plus is $10,000 (Quipli pricing).
- Point of Rental: no prices listed; it quotes on request for the features and users you need, with 2 users included (Point of Rental pricing).
- InTempo: no prices on its trailer page, which offers a demo instead.
- GoodTaco (our product), for an app of your own: free to start, paid plans from $9 a month, and Pro at $49 a month includes 10 users. Bigger teams talk to us about Enterprise.
Before you pick one, add up what you’d pay in a year for your number of locations and users, plus card processing fees.
Can you run a trailer rental business on a spreadsheet?
Yes, while the yard is small. A spreadsheet works when you have a handful of trailers, one person takes every booking, and that person usually works at a desk. Keep one tab of units, one of rentals with out and back dates, and one of payments, using the records in the table above.
It starts to break when:
- Two people book the same trailer. A spreadsheet doesn’t check one rental’s dates against another’s, so avoiding a double booking depends on someone remembering to look.
- Each job gets its own sheet. Insurance in one file, plates in another, maintenance in a third, and every one is updated by hand.
- The yard works from phones. A wide sheet is hard to read on a phone and easy to break.
- Nothing stops a trailer leaving. A sheet can show that insurance is missing, but it can’t hold the trailer until it’s fixed.
- A toll notice arrives. Matching a plate and a date to a renter means searching several tabs.
Active Trailers, an East Texas company that rents, leases, rent-to-owns and sells more than 350 trailers, ran into several of these. Every trailer needs a plate, verified insurance and a GPS tracker before it leaves the yard. Its industry software couldn’t search by plate number and charged for every change, so the team filled the gaps with five spreadsheets: inventory, plates, insurance, units being written up, and a checklist to make sure the other four got done.
“Every time a unit got wrote up, we had to fill out all the spreadsheets, and then we had a checklist for the checklist.”
Myka Ware, Active Trailers
Rental software, a spreadsheet or your own app: which fits your yard?
- Choose rental software if most rentals are booked by the public online, you want card payments and deposit holds built in, and your yard works the way the software does. Try two or three on a free trial or in a demo, with your own trailers and a week of real bookings.
- Stay on a spreadsheet if you have a few units, one person books everything, and nothing has slipped through yet.
- Build your own app if your yard runs its own way, such as leases and rent-to-own next to rentals, or paperwork that must be complete before a trailer goes out, or to fill the gaps your rental software leaves. It also fits if you’d rather change the system yourself than pay for every change.
How do you build your own trailer rental app?
Building your own used to mean hiring a developer, and our guide to custom software development cost shows what that runs to. With an AI app builder, you describe the app instead, and change it by chatting.
That’s how Active Trailers replaced its five spreadsheets. With GoodTaco, the team built one app on the Google Sheet it already used, and it tracks every trailer from the day it hits the yard to the day it’s sold:
- A trailer can’t be cleared for release until its deal paperwork is complete, and insurance only counts once a real policy is on file.
- One screen shows every trailer with expired, expiring or missing coverage.
- Search finds any trailer by plate, VIN or GPS tracker.
- Every check-in is logged with who, when and where, and every stage change, plate swap and tracker move is recorded.
Trailers no longer leave the yard unplated or uninsured. Asked whether that still happens, Myka Ware said: “They don’t.” A 49-cent toll can grow to $150 by the time it reaches the right person, and now matching the plate takes one search: “Now I can go up here at the top of this app and type in the plate number, and it pops up.” Myka is an Excel power user, not a developer. The first version took minutes, and she makes changes herself.
To plan your own, take four steps:
- List your records, using the table above as a start.
- Write down your rules: what must be true before a trailer leaves, what happens when one comes back damaged, and who can change rates.
- Start from what you have: your spreadsheet, or a template.
- Test with real plates and a week of real bookings before everyone switches.
Build a trailer rental app with GoodTaco
GoodTaco is an AI app builder for business teams. Describe the rental app your yard needs, and GoodTaco builds a working web app with screens, forms, search, dashboards and sign-in in minutes. The office works in it on a PC, and yard hands open the same app in their phone’s browser to check a trailer out or in. You change it by chatting, every version is saved for one-click rollback, and it can connect to QuickBooks Online to look up customers and create invoices there.
Start from the trailer list you already keep:
- Upload your spreadsheet. Our spreadsheet to app upload takes .xlsx and CSV files, with no account needed to try it. Your trailers, rentals and customers move into a built-in GoodTaco database, and columns of repeated choices, such as status, become dropdowns.
- Or connect your Google Sheet. With the Google Sheets app builder, the app reads and writes the same sheet.
- Or start from the rental database template. It’s a working app with customers, rental items, bookings with out and back dates, check-ins that charge missing items at their replacement cost, payments and refunds, deposits that hold a booking, and printable quotes and invoices. It warns you before you book more than you have free on those dates. Its sample is a party rental business with tents, tables and chairs. Rename the rental items to your trailer types, and ask GoodTaco to give each trailer its own record with its plate and VIN.
A description like this is enough to start:
Build a trailer rental app on our Units sheet. Show each trailer with its plate, VIN and status, and let us search by plate or VIN. Track rentals with out and back dates, and don’t let a trailer be checked out until the agreement is signed and insurance is on file. Log every check-in with who, when and any damage.
Your app holds any trailer missing its agreement or insurance until the paperwork is done, and finds any trailer by plate or VIN the moment a toll notice arrives.
Bring your trailer spreadsheet, and give your yard an app. Start free, no credit card needed.
Frequently asked questions
What is trailer rental software?
Trailer rental software keeps a rental yard's trailers, reservations, rental agreements, payments and deposits in one place. It shows which trailers are ready, out or in the shop, stops double bookings, and records each trailer's condition at check-out and check-in, plus damage and fees.
What is the best trailer rental software?
It depends on how you rent. Booking platforms such as Booqable, Twice and Reservety suit shops whose customers book and pay online. Equipment rental systems such as Point of Rental, InTempo and Quipli suit companies that also need maintenance, invoicing and accounting in one system. If your yard works in a way no package fits, build your own app on your spreadsheet.
How much does trailer rental software cost?
In October 2026, Reservety listed plans from $59 a month billed monthly, Twice priced from 99 euros a month for the first location, and Quipli charged $6,000 per location per year. Point of Rental and InTempo don't list prices: Point of Rental quotes on request, and InTempo offers a demo. Booqable, Twice and Reservety offer 14-day free trials.
Can I track trailer rentals in Excel or Google Sheets?
Yes, for a small yard where one person takes the bookings. Keep a tab of units with plate, VIN and status, a tab of rentals with out and back dates, and a tab of payments and deposits. It gets risky once several people book, because a spreadsheet won't stop a double booking or a trailer leaving without insurance.
What is the difference between trailer rental software and equipment rental software?
Equipment rental software runs any rental fleet, from tools to heavy machines, with contracts, invoicing and maintenance. Trailer rental software is the same idea with trailer details: plates and VINs, hitch and insurance checks, and sometimes self-service pickup. Booqable, Twice and InTempo all have trailer pages alongside their other rental types.
Do you need GPS trackers on rental trailers?
Not always. A GPS tracker helps you find a late, stolen or misused trailer, so it matters more the more trailers you have on the road. If you fit them, record each tracker's ID on the unit so you can search by tracker as well as by plate. Active Trailers makes sure every trailer has a GPS tracker before it leaves the yard.
Can I build my own trailer rental app?
Yes. With an AI app builder such as GoodTaco, you describe the app or start from your spreadsheet, and it builds the screens for trailers, rentals and payments in minutes. Active Trailers built one on its Google Sheet to track over 350 trailers and hold back any trailer missing its paperwork.
Start from the rental database template
Get your own copy of a working rental database app with sample data, ready to make yours. Free to start.
Use the rental database template, free