Loader/backhoes are a vital part of a successful rental business, but there's more to catching the wave than simply putting one, five or 50 loader-backhoes in your rental fleet. The most critical move you can make, from a successful marketing perspective, is to package your loader-backhoes and other construction equipment products and services as a full-service solution to your customers' needs.

One way to do this is to bundle attachments to suit specific applications. Some Case dealers with rental operations have indicated that they can get as much as 50 percent more for a unit equipped with additional attachments than one equipped only with a bucket.

And the Case data indicate that actual equipment utilization can double when appropriate attachments are part of the rental package.

To package successfully, start by taking a look at your customer mix: who's renting your loader-backhoes?

If you're offering loader-backhoes to a lot of road and bridge contractors, for example, consider offering a road-repair special. Make sure the backhoe and loader are equipped with quick couplers and auxiliary hydraul-ics to facilitate rapid exchange of attachments.

When, in addition to standard backhoe and loader buckets, provide a cold planer, broom and possibly even a compaction unit. With this combination, the contractor can prepare the road surface with the cold planer, clean up the spot with the broom, use the bucket to dump and level cold-patch asphalt and then compact it with a vibratory roller.

We've seen dealer rental yards that successfully offer these combinations on trailers designed to accommodate the machine and the attachments.

For demolition work, you can offer a unit equipped with a hammer on the backhoe end and a scrap grapple bucket and broom on the loader end.

For landscaping or residential construction, you can package a unit with a four-in-one bucket, forks and a box scraper or landscape rake. Augers are also popular for post-hole digging and tree planting.

Rental yards offering packages like these can bring in incremental profit because they are actually increasing their customers' application flexibility while decreasing the investment involved in acquiring expensive dedicated equipment, such as asphalt mills or forklifts, for short-term tasks.

Of course, setting up packages like these requires in-depth knowledge of your customers' applications. Your equipment dealer can support you in making choices that make sense for your location.

The other key to packaging solutions for your customers is product support. You already know the value of keeping equipment running for your own profitability, but look at it from the contractor's perspective. In many cases, if a unit goes down, the contractor pays not only wages for an operator who is waiting for the unit, but also wages and equipment fees for others affected by the downtime. And often the contractor's reason for renting in the first place is specifically as a temporary fleet expansion to meet a critical deadline.

This creates an opportunity for you to package "uptime" service into your loader-backhoe and other equipment rentals. Depending on your own in-house service capabilities, consider teaming up with your equipment dealer to offer on-site service to your rental customers.

You can offer this special service within the context of your total reputation for product support or as a premium package that the customer pays extra for at the counter. This can go hand in hand with the custom attachment package. Top-rate product support can also differentiate your rental business from your competitors.

A few years ago, customers might have rented a loader-backhoe from you as a "fill-in" for a down unit or for a one-time job beyond their in-house capabilities. Today, loader-backhoes and other equipment rentals are increasing dramatically because more and more, savvy contractors see rental as a full-time method to control assets, increase cash flow and customize fleet size to changing economic conditions.

By packaging attachments and product support for popular applications, you're helping your customers be more profitable.

And that's going to grow your business - and keep customers coming back.

Copyright © 1998 American Rental Association. All rights reserved.

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