Forum Archive Index - October 2003

["Sproul Family" <sproulfamily@wave.co.nz>]

I owned a small hire business in Australia for about ten years. So small that in fact there were only three employees , my brother , a driver, and me.

 

SO take the following with a grain of salt, but to me the secrets to success would comprise most of the following:

 

1. LOCATION  In Auckland, for example, proximity to the action.  We were in Brisbane, and while we were small, we had an inner city depot, which meant we could have a piece of equipment on a building site within twenty minutes.  For this reason alone , quite a few of the construction companies used us in preference to the larger companies like Coates Hire, when time was of the essence. Which brings me to my second point:

 

2. SERVICE.  When a construction company wants a tool  or a pump , they generally want it yesterday.  If, for example, a flooded area is holding up the whole job from proceeding, that is big money to them. 

 

Now IMO that service extends to picking the equipment up promptly when it has been "off-hired".  No foreman likes to see rented equipment lying around 2-3 days after he has called  to have it collected. It plants the seed of whether he may still be getting charged for that item, Although I would think the hire company would give him an "off hire" reference number when he rang in .

 

When we turned up at the site with an ordered tool we quite often used to get amazed comments from foremen like "That was quick, I just put down the phone down"  You could tell they were pleased with the service as they rushed the tool out to where it was needed.

 

3.  RELIABLE MACHINERY.

Every machine breaks down sometime, but a top notch service department and service personnel is worth gold to a hire company. Nothing worse than delivering a tool only to get a call back in 15 minutes saying it "has stopped".  Nothing will drive people to the opposition quicker than a reputation for unreliable equipment.

This does not necessarily mean that it has to be NEW, but it must be well maintained, look attractive (painted and clean), and WORK LIKE NEW.

 

4.  FRIENDLY PERSONNEL.  To keep our customers happy, we often "cross-hired" equipment that we did not stock, from other companies

Fair Dinkum, some of the guys that worked for opposition firms wouldn't crack a smile if their mother-in-law fell down a flight of steps.

A smile and a bit of a friendly banter goes a long way in the hire game, I think.

 

As for your other queries, I will try to answer as best I can:

 

Builders having their "own stuff" - varies from one builder to the next. Some tried to own as much as they could, others preferred to hire quite a bit, especially items prone to breakdown.  Electric jackhammers were a big bogey when I entered the industry, a real headache to keep them going. Then Hitachi bought out  a jackhammer which left its rivals for dead, so much so that even builders who regularly hired them started buying them, much to my sorrow.

 

Naturally , in boom times such as this , hire companies do quite well. Builders aren't going to buy thousands of dollars worth of equipment to have it lying around in their storage yard when the boom time ends.  So they will hire a lot of gear right now, probably over the whole range from scaffolding to electric tools  because they just don't have enough to go around all the sites, and it's a huge pain to take a tool off one site to another, cos' sure enough it will be wanted back at the first site almost immediately.

 

As far as doing "deals" I would be surprised if the hire company reps aren't around the bigger companies offering something, whether it be a discount, or a couple of tickets to the Rugby to the foreman.  Or maybe there is an edict from Head Office to hire off "so-and So" and the foreman has no choice.  Depends on whose depots are in the area I guess. 

 

I suspect, same as Australia, one of the biggest users of hire equipment would be governmental agencies  such as Transit NZ, and I would guess deals are done there , maybe even a little payola, who knows?

 

We used to hand the foreman a new (inexpensive) pen  every time we made a delivery, they never had to search around the site office for a pen , they always had one with our name and phone number on it.

 

So next time you drive past that new highway under construction , look around to see if you can see any names on the rollers, earth vibrators, barricades, even the amber flashing lights - yes we used to hire them out, too.

 

Sorry I can't put this into the NZ context at all , but surely the principles would be the same.

 

One thing  I am sure of , and a good reason NOT to be in the hire business, is the liability insurance premiums must be out of this world.

Back twenty years ago we were mildly aware of our responsibility to give good instructions on use and safety with say,  a chain saw.  I am sure the obligations would be much more strict today.  A veritable minefield for litigation !!

 

Hope this gives a little insight into the hire industry. Like you say the only sure way is to talk to the customers, or take regular photos of the HIRE YARDS, to see how often and how much of the equipment is moving.

Honestly, that's how I used to do it with our opposition!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Sproul;David
FN:David Sproul
EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:dsproul@corsairmarine.com
REV:20031028T091400Z
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