A market with consequences
It’s been a while since I have updated, business has exploded and U.S. Equipment Sales is on target to having a $1,000,000 year in it’s first year. If you counted our cooperative deals with other companies and brokers, we have already passed that mark for the year.
There have been some recent events in the Florida market and I want to chime in on them and see if anyone out there has any more info on these suspicions.
A week or so ago, I got an internal email from a friend that was addressed from the VP of Briggs Equipment. It said they are closing all of their Florida and South Carolina branches down in stages over the next few months. This is a blind side. I would have never thought in a million years it would be them. I have suspicions on several other local competitors, but not ever Briggs. I always try to read through the words and see the intent with everything I get. It oddly coincides with a press release from Ahern of Las Vegas that they will be opening (or acquiring) 15 new branches over the next few months. They just opened a branch in South Carolina so this marriage of equipment companies makes sense. They have a presence in nearly all southern states with the exception of Florida, Alabama, and a couple others.
It sounds a little conspiracy theory-like, but I would not be surprised. I have tapped a couple of my sources but have no response yet. If you know of any pending merger, I would love to hear. As far as the Case line, I am not sure why anyone would NOT want the line. A new dealership would not have exorbant expectations with this market which gives them a great opportunity to build. The pool of experienced staff has never been better in the area. Case is a high quality brand with a great municipality presence. It’s a no lose situation. Obviously the bigger rental companies are not going anywhere. United is still on top, Sunbelt and RSC are not far behind. Sunbelt has made some tremendous implementations and fleet movements that are borderline genious. They will be effectively raising their utilization with new greenfield stores while still capitalizing on their remediation and industrial markets. Ring Power has the money to survive this and ramp back up almost immediately once the market shows signs of life again. Nortrax will survive, but not the same as it once was. The JCB dealers will have a tough time, but JCB as a company has a great support team and will help the dealers re-calibrate their purchasing and sales. There are a few rental companies that I will not name that will face an almost certain failure. They whored up the market and only became known for being the “lowball”. That is never a good marketing strategy.
As I said before, if anyone has inside knowledge of the Briggs Equipment or Ahern deal, please drop me a line and let me know.
Side note: Now is the perfect time to get a guy like Bryan Rich (NationsRent) or Bruce Dressel (Sunbelt) to come in and fill Briggs gap. The facilities are already in place, the candidate pool is impressive, the Case line is strong, and the rental industry is going to start recovering over the next 12 months.
