----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 7:14
PM
Subject: Re: [sharechat] The hire
business and Hirequip reply to Snoopy
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!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To
remove yourself from this list, please use the form
at
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/chat/forum/
See IRG research reports
