Spring is when people finally deal with the jobs that need height. Gutters cleared, fascias painted, a chimney repointed, render patched after the winter. A tower is the sensible way to reach any of it, and moving one is the part nobody thinks about until it is standing in a hire yard in front of them. Scaffold tower van hire is a straightforward booking as long as you know the frame lengths, and once van hire in Warrington is arranged the job becomes a single trip rather than several.
Towers Come Apart Into Long Rigid Pieces
An access tower breaks down into end frames, horizontal and diagonal braces, platform boards with trapdoors, toe boards, castors and stabilisers. The frames and the platform boards are the items that dictate the vehicle, because both are rigid and both are long. A standard platform board runs to roughly two and a half metres and cannot be shortened, angled or persuaded. Stabiliser outriggers are long too and are frequently forgotten when people are estimating. Nothing in the package is unmanageably heavy on its own, but there are a lot of separate pieces and they all need to lie flat and travel without sliding.
Choosing a Body That Handles the Lifting
The individual components are awkward rather than heavy, but there are many of them and each has to be lifted in and out twice. Platform boards in particular are bulky and unwieldy for one person. The Luton van with tail lift makes a tower collection considerably easier because you can stage the whole set on the platform at ground level and raise it in one go rather than lifting each frame up into the vehicle. The large box body also keeps everything dry, which matters if you are collecting on a wet March morning and the boards are going to be stood on later.
Loading Order for a Full Tower Set
Load in the order you will need things, which is the reverse of how you will build. Boards go in first, flat on the floor at the front, since they are the last thing to go on the tower. End frames stand on edge against the side walls. Braces are the pieces that get lost, so bundle them together and keep them somewhere obvious rather than letting them work their way underneath everything else. Castors and stabilisers go in a box or a bag. Count everything against the hire company’s list before you leave their yard, because a missing brace discovered at home means the tower cannot be built to its full height safely.
Securing Steel and Aluminium in Transit
Tower components are metal and slide against a metal floor with almost no friction. A stack of boards will travel forward as one mass under braking, and end frames leaning against a side wall will walk along it and end up against the doors. Push everything hard against the bulkhead, strap the boards down rather than only across, and put something between the metal and the van floor to reduce sliding and protect both. Anything with a sharp corner should not be resting against the vehicle’s inner skin. It is also worth checking the load again after the first few miles, since a metal load settles as soon as it starts moving.
Working Out Where the Tower Will Stand
Before you collect anything, work out where the tower is going and whether the ground there is suitable. A tower needs level, firm footing and enough clearance from the wall to be built with its stabilisers deployed, and a sloping garden or a soft border complicates that considerably. Check for overhead cables and think about whether you can get the components round to the back of the house at all. Customers working on properties around Golborne van hire bookings and the older terraced streets nearer town often find rear access is the real constraint, since there may be no way to get a two and a half metre board into a back yard except through the house.
Booking the Van Around the Hire Period
Tower hire usually runs to fixed periods, so plan the van around the collection and the return rather than only the collection. Our depot on Tilley Street beside Asda at the main entrance to Cockhedge Shopping Centre is open Monday to Saturday from 8am to 4pm and closed on Sunday. Bring your photocard licence and a DVLA check code, note there is no deposit on most of our vehicles, and leave your own car in the free secure parking on site. If you want to check anything before booking, the team can be reached through our contact us page or by phone.
Returning the Tower and the Second Trip
The return leg catches people out because they have stopped thinking about it by then. A tower that has been standing outside for a fortnight comes back dirty, often wet, and with the components no longer neatly bundled the way the hire yard supplied them. Allow the same amount of time for the return that the collection took, and load it the same way rather than throwing it in because the job is finished. Hire yards check components back in against their list, so a brace left in a garden is a brace you will be asked about. Sweep the boards off before they go in the van, since dried render and paint spatter transfer to everything. It is also worth photographing the load before you set off, which settles any question about what was returned and in what condition without anybody having to rely on memory a week later.
Tell us the platform board length and the tower height you are hiring and we will confirm the right body for both legs of the job. Call the depot on 01925 396 222 to book the collection and the return together.
