Scheduling activities that require collection/return of non-standard equipment

Summary:

How does everyone handle automating the scheduling of activities that require a Resource to attend another "pool/central" location to collect a piece of specialist equipment that is needed to handle the task at the primary site? and then return that equipment afterwards?

It's easy enough to simply say that the equipment is needed and rely on the Resource to create the Pick Up/Drop Off activities to cover the time required, but there must be a more automated way of ensuring the time is correctly reserved in advance.

I've considered the use of Warehouses. In theory, setting the specialist equipment as Required Inventory would allow Routing to automatically create the Pick Up requirement and "consume" the equipment from the Warehouse to mitigate the chance of it being scheduled to be in 2 different places at the same time. But this still leaves the Drop Off requirement and the "return" of the equipment to the Warehouse outstanding.