I have a nice 7k, dual axle car hauler trailer that I bought for hauling my tractor. My Cottage neighbor two doors down asked to borrow it to haul a bunch of heavy pieces for a lift that he was making inside his garage. He is really a nice guy, and he keeps all of his stuff totally clean and neat, to the point of even wiping his boat down every time he uses it.
So I lent it to him. It came back in perfect condition, and he even repacked the trailer wheels for me with new grease! And this was on a virtually new trailer.
Anyway, him I can trust to borrow stuff like that. But still, no one uses my tractor except me. I have doug A total of three ditches for people, for their underground powerlines, and they were there with me while I was doing it.
Once, another neighbor asked to borrow my tractor to dig a new hole for his old house that he was moving. I said “nope, but I will dig it for you“. He never followed up.
I will let and have let other people drive one of my ATVs, but even then only when I am on the other ATV right there with them.
I have let one of my daughter’s girlfriends drive one of the two JetSki’s that we have, but my daughter is always right there with her. That of course makes me a little more nervous, but this girlfriend is very capable and very responsible.
I let my BIL drive one of the JetSki’s one time, because I could see him from the dock, and
told him not to go out of sight. Bad idea. He came across a guy whose JetSki was sinking, and decided to throw him a rope to pull him. Well of course the rope got caught in my JetSki impeller mechanism, and practically pulled the guys finger off. It was quite a frightening time waiting for the report, because they took him to the hospital with his hand bleeding all over the place. It was quite an adventure after we got the JetSki out onto the trailer, deciding who was going to crawl underneath to look at and untangle where the rope was caught. We all expected to find a finger! So of course I got elected. Fortunately the rope did not pull his finger off, but rather tore a tendon and caused bleeding. But of course we didn’t know that while I was unwrapping the rope, which was now pink. Very relieved to find out later that that guy’s finger was going to be OK, but it was very tense there for a while.
Needless to say, my brother-in-law has not been allowed to touch the JetSki since then. I will let him borrow a screwdriver, however!