I came to Rental Management in 1995 after 17 years on the corporate staff of a large corporation, where I managed executive communications, including such projects as the annual report, quarterly earnings reports, financial news releases, the annual meeting, executive speeches, top-management presentations to the New York financial analysts who follow the machinery industry, and so forth. It was fun work sometimes, frustrating from time to time, always challenging, occasionally exasperating and usually rewarding.

But eventually I decided I had been there, done that long enough and wanted a new challenge. So I set out to find something new and different, and shortly thereafter the American Rental Association and I found each other, and voila! there it was: a fascinating industry, totally different from the Fortune 100 environment I had abandoned - small companies with a store or two, for the most part, maybe a dozen employees instead of thousands, some of the largest ones doing about as much business in a year as the company I had come from did before coffee break on a typical day - and an industry full of people who were the salt of the earth and deserved the very best help possible. Plus a magazine determined to serve this industry as a trusted friend. I felt like Brigham Young: "This is the place," I said.

Imagine my amazement, just a few months after signing on as editor of Rental Management, to see the rental industry starting to upshift - then pick up speed and shift again, and then again, into high gear. Filings of initial public offerings capital formation mergers and acquisitions consolidations reports of quarterly earnings and declared dividends annual reports Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-K reports, 10-Q's, 8-K's financial news releases covering primary and diluted earnings per share, operating profit, pro-forma revenue comparisons - you get the picture.

So now I find myself back in the middle of it - the intrigues of strategy and growth, the strict sobriety of financial reporting and the charged atmosphere of corporate life. Dan Kaplan said the other day that the rental industry has changed more in the past two years than it had in the previous 50.

Just look at the Rental Management cover stories in the past year: the GAP Group (then $31.7 million in revenues and 37 locations); Speedy Hire, Northern Division ($26.4 million, 37 locations); Nations-Rent ($460 million, 135 locations); Jewson Hire Point/RentX (a projected estimate of $218 million in combined revenues and 244 locations after the merger); and this month, Aggreko ($290 million, 110 locations). The 12 companies featured over the past year have a total of 675 branches. In 1996, we featured eight companies that had 18 branches between them - that shows the reality of what's going on in the industry. Half the companies in RM in the past year are big.

Oh yes, we've covered the small independents, too, and we always will, because this is a magazine for the whole rental industry.

But the reality is that a big chunk of this industry has already become big business, and you will be seeing that fact reflected more and more in Rental Management's coverage of the industry as time goes on.

Some may find these developments exhilarating, full of excitement and opportunity; others may find them unsettling, even scary. We see them as inevitable realities and move on to what we can learn from experience and observation in order to help support the success and prosperity of this deserving industry in the future. In fact, a great deal about management and strategic assessments of the potential in rental can be gleaned from these large rental corporations, and the small independents can learn from them. And some of the big boys can learn a great deal from the independents about developing - patiently, over time - a loyal customer base that puts service before price. So we will continue to talk to both large and small, and pass the good news we find around to everybody.

No sooner had I laid into the airlines (again) for reading meaningless mantras off cards instead of providing real information and customer care [see the Rental Management editorial, September 1999] than this batch of supposedly actual airline flight announcements came by in the e-mail. Now, this is more like it:

After a very bumpy landing: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Amarillo. Please remain in your seats, with your seat belts securely fastened, while the captain taxis what's left of the airplane to the gate. Thank you."

After another hard landing, this one in Phoenix: "Please remain in your seats until Capt. Crash and his crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt against the gate. Once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning bells are silenced, we'll open the door and you can pick your way through the wreckage to the terminal. Thank you."

As the plane was rolling to a stop after landing at Washington National, a voice came over the loudspeaker: "Whoa, there, big fella, whoa!"

"Thank you for flying with us. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride. -Last one off the plane has to clean it."

"We'd like to thank you for flying with us today. And the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you'll think of us."

"Make sure to gather up all your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses."

Why can't the routines of business be handled like this all the time? Would I fly these airlines again? Sure! They proved that they weren't just wooden stick-figures but real human beings with wit and a willingness to share it with human customers instead of herding them like cattle.