Knowing what you have
What a trailer rental reservation has to hold
The customer books online, arrives with the wrong ball size or no wiring, and the slot is gone. A trailer reservation is mostly questions about the vehicle that is not being rented.
- Largest bike rental fleet on Hilton Head IslandBodhisys runs the reservations, routing and returns behind it.
- Running live rental operations since 2023Every peak season since has been taken on the platform.
- Every capability includedNo feature tiers and no paid modules holding anything back.
Fit decides everything
A trailer is useless on its own. It needs a hitch with the right ball size, a vehicle with the tow rating to pull it loaded, a wiring connector that matches, and a tongue weight the vehicle can carry. All four belong to the customer's vehicle, and a reservation that does not ask about it has confirmed nothing.
That is why a trailer booking looks different from a bike booking. The reservation asks what the customer is driving, so the yard knows before the customer drives over whether the fit works, and a mismatch is a phone call on Thursday rather than a lost slot on Saturday.
Saturday 9am
- B-114North shopAvailable
- B-118North shopAvailable
- B-127South yardOut until 4:10pm
- B-131North shopAvailable
- B-140South yardAvailable
- B-142WorkshopBrake service, back Friday
- B-155North shopCleaning, 20 minutes
- B-160South yardAvailable
Eight bikes, two locations, one in the workshop. Book against each model and see which one can tell you which bike the customer is getting.
Road-legal checks belong to the unit
Lights, tyres, straps, brakes where fitted, and a plate. Each carries an inspection date, and a trailer past one of them is unavailable wherever it is parked. Held against the unit as a service state, that trailer leaves the board on the date rather than on the morning somebody notices.
The handover check is the other half: lights working, tyres sound, straps present, photographed with the customer there. Returns and turnaround is where the service state lives.
- Licence uploaded
- Insurance uploaded
- Waiver signed
- Sobriety check
- Licence uploaded
- Insurance uploaded
- Waiver signed
- Sobriety check
Condition at both ends
Damage on a trailer is often discovered at a yard that did not hand it out. A photographed check at collection and again at return, held against the unit rather than the booking, is what makes that conversation possible across two sites. Trailers across more than one yard is about the one-way hire that creates the problem.
Three pricing shapes in one catalogue
Trailers rent by the day, by the week and one-way. A day rate times seven is rarely the week rate, and a one-way hire that ends at a yard you will have to tow it back from carries a repositioning cost that belongs in the price. Those are rules on the rate table rather than discount codes, edited by you when the season or the imbalance changes. Seasonal pricing covers how length-of-stay rules are expressed.
The tracker on the frame
A trailer spends its hire detached from anything you can see. A tracker on the frame reports which yard it is sitting in and raises a boundary alert if it crosses an area the hire never covered. It reports position and raises that alert, and does nothing else: there is no remote lock, and disclosing the tracker to the renter is yours to handle.
What it will not do
Bodhisys asks the towing questions with the booking and holds the answers against the reservation. It does not know the tow rating of every vehicle on the road, so the figure the customer enters is the figure your yard works from, and checking the plate on the door of the truck at handover stays with you. It also gives no legal advice about what your state requires of a trailer on the road.
What information should a trailer rental booking collect?
The customer's towing vehicle alongside the trailer: ball size, tow rating, wiring connector and the tongue weight the vehicle can carry. Held against the reservation, those answers let the yard confirm the fit before the customer drives over, which is what stops a customer arriving with the wrong hitch and losing the slot.
On the unit side, road-legal checks with inspection dates that take a trailer off the board on the date, a photographed handover and return held against the unit rather than the booking, and rate rules for daily, weekly and one-way hire that carry the repositioning cost. The figure the customer enters for their vehicle is the one the system works from, and checking it at handover stays with the yard.
Questions
Can the booking ask about the customer's tow vehicle?
Yes. Ball size, connector and tow rating are captured with the booking and held against the reservation, so the fit is confirmed before the customer drives over.
Does an expired inspection take a trailer off the board?
Yes. Inspection dates sit on the unit as a service state, and a trailer past one is unavailable wherever it is parked until it is cleared.
Can one-way hire be priced differently?
Yes. Daily, weekly and one-way rates are rules on the rate table you edit yourself, including a surcharge sized to the repositioning cost.
What does Bodhisys cost?
There is no monthly fee. A 4.5% charge is added to each reservation and paid by your customer at checkout.
If this is your operation
A demo takes six fields and someone who understands rental operations calls you back. Where Bodhisys is the wrong fit you will hear it on that call rather than after three meetings.