Rental Equipment Register

I admit I didn’t know what to expect as I headed to Orlando for last week’s Rental Show. Those of you who read our January issue, in which rental companies, manufacturers and service providers to the rental industry offered their projections for 2010 — which you can read online at http://rermag.com/business_technology/business_info_analysis/30-takes-new-year-20100101 — you know that the outlook people expressed was, for the most part, quite pessimistic about the year ahead. “I’m heading down to Orlando to buy some new equipment because I have a lot of demand from my customers” was not a comment our staff frequently heard. more

Writing obituaries is a necessary part of the profession of journalism, and not a particularly fun one, especially when it involves someone you knew. I started to write the word “know,” rather than “knew” since it’s hard to think of someone who recently died in the past tense. But, one might say, death is part of life and the best way to remember someone is to celebrate who they were. more

Sumitomo Corp. has acquired a minority ownership in Phoenix-based Sunstate Equipment. This news will be up shortly on RER’s website at www.rermag.com. The investment is a significant investment in the United States rental industry at a time when capital is hard to come by for most rental companies. more

Over the past few years, the American Rental Association has inducted quite a few worthy people into its rental Hall of Fame. Industry pioneers such as Leonard Hawk and Sam Greenberg, Bill Grasse and John Doran, manufacturers such as Ed Mahlzahn and Irv Levine, and many others who have contributed to the development of the rental industry. more

After a second round of third-quarter 2009 financial results were released last week, the RER Reports Stock Block reported declines by all but two of the companies it reports Friday-ending results for each week. The two companies whose stocks were up over the previous week at the close of the market on Friday were Gorman-Rupp Co., which the previous week reported a 23.9-percent decline in sales over its third-quarter 2008 sales, but last week declared a quarterly cash dividend of 10.5 cents per share on the common stock — its 239th consecutive dividend paid to shareholders — and Qualcomm, which closed 1.5-percent higher than the previous week at $41.33. Qualcomm began its fiscal 2010 first quarter on Sept. 28. more

The report that came out last week from IHI Global Insights (see more detail at http://rermag.com/trends_analysis/headlinenews/construction-job-loss-study-100209) was fascinating in considering the depth of the recession in the construction equipment industry, which has suffered 8 percent of the job losses during the recession in the United States. That’s an amazing number, and it’s far more than have been lost in the automobile manufacturing industry, which has gotten an immense amount of media attention. I don’t know how many commentaries I’ve read about the potential for catastrophe should one of the Big Three go out of business and how the government bailing it out is almost a matter of national survival (bringing back the old saying ‘what’s good for General Motors is good for the U.S.A.). And how many have pointed out the potential number of vendors to the car manufacturers that would suffer, the number of people that would go out of work, and on and on. more

When the phone isn’t ringing at a business, the company can increase its sales efforts to try to make it ring more by chasing business aggressively. In the current economic environment, as many rental companies will attest, there still isn’t enough business to be found when customers finish jobs and have no new jobs to replace the recently completed ones. Business in such circumstances need to try to adapt to changing times by enhancing their portfolio of services or at least re-package them in different ways. more

I highly recommend you check out the AED Executive Forum in Chicago, Sept. 10-11. I’ve gone almost every year since the forums started about a decade ago and every year I learn something. It certainly will make you think and most of the people I talk to that attend the forum get some valuable ideas they can apply to their businesses or at least think about their businesses in a new way. more

For those of you who are CEOs or owners of your companies, let me ask one question: Are you the smartest person in your company? Some of you probably are and that’s how you got to be CEO, but for those who answer that question with a “no”, I think you’re on the right track. As one rental company owner once said to me, “I sure as hell hope I’m not the smartest one here, because then we’d be in a world of trouble.” more

One of my “bucket list” items is to visit every one of the 50 states and to really get a feel for the culture and the people that live in each state. I had the privilege recently to visit a state that was new to me, but definitely not new to the people who work for Bobcat. The company invited me to travel to Bismarck, N.D., for a media event filled with product introductions as well as some of the local flare. The new Bobcat products, which include the M-Series loaders and excavators and the E60 and E80 excavators, and will be featured in the July issue of RER, did not disappoint, and neither did the state of North Dakota. more