By default, the shortest rental a renter can book is overnight — pick up today, return tomorrow. If you want renters to be able to pick up and return the same day (a morning-to-evening job, or filling a gap between two bookings), turn on short-term rentals. This article explains how it works and clears up the most common misunderstanding about the hourly rate.
Your hourly rate is never shown to renters
This is the big one: the hourly rate is not displayed on your public listing. Renters browsing your trailers see your daily, 3-day, weekly, and monthly rates — that's it. The hourly rate is a behind-the-scenes number the platform only uses to price a same-day window when a renter actually books one.
Good to know: Setting an hourly rate does not clutter your listing or advertise cheap hourly pricing. Skipping it doesn't keep your card cleaner — it just locks renters out of same-day bookings entirely.
What turning it on unlocks
With short-term rentals on (and an hourly rate on the unit), a renter can choose the same date for pickup and return — for example, pick up at 8:00 AM and return at 6:00 PM. Without it, the earliest return the calendar offers is the next day, so a trailer sitting idle all day Tuesday can't be rented for just Tuesday.
How same-day pricing works
A same-day booking is billed hours × your hourly rate, with two guardrails that protect you:
- Minimum hours. Renters can't book shorter than your minimum (you set it; the default is 2 hours). A 30-minute grab still bills the minimum.
- Capped at your daily rate. The hourly total never exceeds one day. Pick up at 6:00 AM, return at midnight — that's billed as your daily rate, not 18 stacked hours. Renters can't game a same-day booking into costing more than a day, and you never earn less than your hourly math says the window is worth.
Everything else works exactly like a normal booking: same checkout, same contract, same deposit, and your turnaround buffer still applies before and after.
Setting it up (two steps)
- Turn on short-term rentals — in your dashboard under Payments → Settings → Short-Term / Hourly Rentals, flip on Allow short-term / hourly rentals and set your minimum hours. This is one switch for your whole account.
- Give the unit an hourly rate — edit the unit's pricing and fill in Hourly rate. Only units with an hourly rate offer same-day booking, so you can enable it trailer by trailer.
A good starting point: daily rate ÷ 6, rounded up. A $200/day trailer at $35/hr bills a 3-hour job at $105 and hits the $200 cap around six hours — short jobs stay worth your time, and long days land at your normal daily rate.
Related articles
- Calendar and availability — turnaround buffers and how conflicting times are blocked
- Pickup and return hours — which times of day renters can choose
- How bookings work
Still need help? Tap the Support button in your dashboard.