Wet Hire vs Dry Hire

What is dry hire?

Dry hire means you hire the vehicle or the machine on its own and supply the operator yourself. The hire company delivers the asset, keeps it registered and serviced through the hire, and your people run it. Insurance sits wherever the hire agreement puts it. You are buying availability of the machine, not labour.

Giidjaa Hire is a dry hire business. Every vehicle and every piece of plant we supply is hired without an operator, on long-term terms to business clients, with hire-to-buy available on selected vehicles and plant.

What is wet hire?

Wet hire means the machine turns up with a qualified operator supplied by the hire company, usually charged at an hourly or daily rate that bundles the plant, the operator and the running costs. You are buying a task done rather than a machine to run. The operator stays employed by the hire company, which is what shifts the supervision and competency burden across to them.

When does dry hire suit a project?

Dry hire is the right answer when you already have the crew. If your people are ticketed and on site anyway, paying for an operator you do not need is dead cost, and the longer the job runs the more that gap compounds.

It also suits work where the asset needs to be there all the time rather than for a task. A site vehicle is the clearest example. Nobody wet hires a ute, because the vehicle belongs to the crew for the length of the project and the driver is whoever is rostered. The same logic applies to a generator powering a site or a lighting tower running through nights. If the machine is part of the site rather than a visitor to it, dry hire is usually the cheaper and simpler structure, and it keeps the asset under your day-to-day control.

When does wet hire suit better?

Wet hire earns its premium on short, specialised work. If a machine is needed for a few days, needs a licence or a competency your crew does not hold, or the work is a discrete task with a clear finish, bringing an operator with the machine avoids training people for something they will do once. It is also the practical option when you simply cannot resource the seat, which happens on tight programs more often than anyone plans for.