Published January 2002

United Rentals offers equipment alternative

By John Wolcott
Herald Business Journal Editor

United Rentals will open its new, enlarged Marysville outlet early this year, focusing on serving contractors with everything from hand-sized power tools to man-lifts, graders, dozers, excavators and dump trucks. For businesses, especially in the current economic slowdown, United Rentals’ presence offers a relatively new alternative with more equipment choices than ever before.

Before United Rentals bought several smaller equipment rental businesses in Washington state, including Pilchuck Rentals in Marysville, homeowners picked up drain snakes and chainsaws while contractors signed for cement cutters and small forklifts.

That has changed in a big way with the impact of United Rentals’ national expansion moves that have transformed small businesses like Pilchuck into an equipment haven for contractors, builders and even retail stores in temporary need of a man-lift to change high-ceiling light bulbs.

With more than 750 branches in 47 states, seven Canadian provinces and Mexico, United Rentals offers 600 types of equipment and a $3.6 billion rental fleet that includes 500,000 items, from hand tools and generators to excavators, dump trucks, graders, dozers, trenchers and cranes — all colorfully displayed in a thick new catalog that reads like a wish book for builders.

“We’re a young, aggressive company with 34 stores in Washington, and we’re expanding,” said Lance Brown, formerly owner of Pilchuck Rentals before he sold to United Rentals in 1999. Now he’s United Rentals’ district manager for territory that includes King County to the Canadian border and the state of Alaska.

“We want to get the word out to contractors that it’s more efficient and less expensive to rent big equipment that we maintain and insure than it is to own their own machinery,” he said.

Brown said 75 percent of his business comes from contractors and other businesses, with the remainder from rentals to homeowners who want only temporary use of power tools or specialty equipment.

Marysville Store Manager John Stevenson, who’s awaiting the early 2002 opening of United Rentals’ new 15,000-square-foot, two-story office building, district headquarters, display center, repair facility and its adjacent equipment storage yard, said the company’s growth in the area is a response to the rental trend in the construction industry.

“Contractors are discovering they can bid on jobs with rental equipment without having to invest $150,000 in a piece of large machinery, pay insurance on it, maintain it and figure out how to keep it busy after that current job is done,” Stevenson said. “They tell us renting is a good alternative for them. It’s a trend that’s going to really grow in this current (slowing) economy where many contractors are looking for new ways to stay profitable and to bid contracts without investing in their own equipment.”

He said United Rentals also provides maintenance and repair service for contractors’ own major brand equipment — the Marysville store has a parts and service staff with 295 years of combined experience — along with online Web rental ordering, construction equipment that averages less than 29 months old in the national fleet, emergency repair service and sales of both new and old equipment.

Companies with national accounts have a single contact person to handle orders for equipment at sites throughout the country, and transaction, account and rental records can be accessed on the Internet through secure servers.

“Contractors have gotten a lot smarter over the years in their businesses, especially as computers have helped them see cost comparisons more easily. In the last seven years the trend has been toward rental equipment. We provide OSHA- and WISHA-certified equipment, the insurance and even train the equipment operators. Renting equipment means more than just looking at the rental rates,” Brown said.

“Since OSHA now mandates man-lift equipment instead of scaffolding for safety reasons, there’s a lot of demand for that equipment, too,” Stevenson added.

Growth in the equipment rental arena is what spurred Brown to sell his business to United Rentals, he said.

“I anticipated this kind of growth even before I sold,” he said. “I started buying this Marysville property (for the new facility) in 1997. The business I started in 1979 had already outgrown its limited space along State Avenue by around 1992. Snohomish County grew so fast, we couldn’t keep up with the market.”

In Snohomish County, with stores in Arlington, Marysville, Bothell and Monroe, the new Marysville outlet is United Rentals’ largest expansion. Last December, the Monroe United Rentals facility — serving an area where the meeting of SR2 and SR522 has spurred significant commercial and residential development — moved into a new and larger building. And in Bothell, the heavy-equipment storage yard is being expanded.

King County’s seven stores, providing equipment for the new Seahawks stadium and other projects, are also being surveyed for expansion opportunities, Brown said.

When Brown decided to build the new Marysville store he’s leasing back to United Rentals, through his own partnership business, Brown-Matson Co., he hired local contractors and customers — such as Tim’s Welding, Gagnon Masonry and Evergreen State Sheet Metal Co. And, of course, he knew where to rent the trenchers, dozers and man-lifts for the construction project.

For more information about United Rentals, visit www.unitedrentals.com on the Internet. The Marysville store and district offices can be reached at 360-653-5552 or 800-352-2574.

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