The machine is a third of it. The barge, the operator's bed and the ramp at low water are the rest.
A contractor telephones and asks what a five tonne excavator costs for a week. The honest answer is that the machine is the smallest part of the number and we cannot give you the rest without knowing which island.
Here is the whole picture on a real shape of job: a week of footings on an island two hours north of Male.
The machine for seven days at the weekly rate is the figure on this site. Then the barge, both ways, which is one fixed cost that does not care whether the machine works for three days or ten. Then the operator, whose accommodation and food on your island for eight nights is a real number that somebody has to pay. Then fuel, which on a footings job is modest and on a reclamation edge is not.
That is why the day rates here are the machine only, and why the quotation has five lines. A single all in figure looks simpler and is wrong for every island except the one it was calculated for.
The cost that surprises people most is the one that is not money. The harbour ramp. Several island ramps will not take a thirteen tonne machine off a barge at low water, and one we work with regularly cannot take it at any state of tide. Finding that out on the morning of the barge costs a week.
So we ask to visit before quoting anything large, and about one job in five comes back with a smaller machine than the one requested. That conversation is free. The other version of it is not.