Rental Center: Service in Sarasota
American Pride Rental and Sales has found its niche in the growing Sarasota, Florida area.
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Vince Mattei, general manager, John Castoro, owner, and Joseph Castoro, sales territory manager head up the management team at American Pride Rental and Sales. It rents a wide variety of small- to mid-sized equipment throughout Florida. |
“My story is that I’ve gone from full-size equipment to HO scale,” says John Castoro, owner of American Pride Rental and Sales based in Sarasota, Florida.
In reflecting on the 50 years he’s been involved with the rental business, he’s had a taste of various rental operations.
“When I was 16, we lived in Clark, New Jersey, and I approached a rental business owner and asked him for a job,” recalls Castoro. “He said he wasn’t hiring and I offered to work for him for free to learn the business. All I asked him was that if I asked a question, he would answer it. That’s how I started in the rental business.”
A year later, his father, Rocco, bought into a Taylor Equipment Rental franchise in Sarasota, Florida. John started working there as well and a year later, they opened two more stores nearby. “They were your standard-fare Taylor Rentals, renting everything from rollaway cots to party ware to demolition hammers. We even had a vibrator belt that was supposed to help users lose weight.”
In 1986, the Taylor Rental franchise was purchased by Stanley Tools. “By that time, my brother, Carl and I were working there and in 1992, we decided to start our own equipment rental company, ASAP Rentals,” John says.
The brothers operated ASAP Rentals for 20 years, growing to four locations from Tampa to Fort Myers. “We had seven transport semi lowboys, half a dozen rollback trucks and another 20 or so pickup trucks and 180 employees. We had well over 40,000 square-feet of building space in multiple spots and we were a dealer for Genie, Terex, JCB and New Holland. We became an ASV dealer when they first came out and we were the largest dealer in the world. We also rented and sold big off-road dump trucks,” he says.
World changing
“I can say I’ve been there and done that, and by 2012, the world of rental was changing. Multi-location chains and big box stores were aggressively pursuing the equipment rental market,” says John.
Scoping the market, John and Carl saw an opportunity to cater more to the burgeoning small to medium-sized contractors. “We stocked a good inventory of smaller construction equipment and accessories as well as parts to service them. We cater to their needs and they appreciate it; no one else is willing to do that because it is very time consuming. But our customers are rewarding us by coming back with more business,” he says.
In the ’2000s, ASAP Rentals was one of the first rental centers in the Tampa area to be totally electronic in its operation. Today, American Pride Rental and Sales uses a handwritten paper system for rental contracts. “We used to have a large room that had computers the size of large file cabinets. I thought we had to be computerized, but it seemed we spent more time printing out reports than we did serving customers. I started thinking about that and went back to the hand-written order system and we’ve been doing it that way ever since.”
Presently, there are 10 employees in the operation; Carl retired in 2020 but still is a consultant for the business. John’s son, Joseph, joined the operation in 2018 as sales territory manager. Shaun Sweeney, who has been the territory manager, is showing Joseph the ropes and slowly turning accounts over to him. “Working with Sean is the best education I could ever get. I should have listened to my father a long time ago and joined the business sooner. It’s very exciting to chase a sale,” says Joseph.
Vince Mattei, American Pride’s general manager, has been in the rental business nearly as long as John. “He has 37 years of experience in the rental business and he’s on top of everything here. He handles the dispatching as well as our posts on social media. I think his efforts are bringing more people in the front door. We often handle as many as 100 calls a day, and we don’t have voicemail or messaging. Every call gets answered by a live person,” John says.
John says that American Pride presently has just over 700 pieces of rental equipment, valued at $4 million. “When we had ASAP Rentals, it was much bigger equipment, but at American Pride, it is smaller equipment such as skid steers, mini excavators, telehandlers, tow-behind lifts and other aerial units.”
Equipment availability has affected American Pride’s inventory. “We had some stand-on compact utility loaders on back order and the manufacturer couldn’t give us an expected delivery date. We started looking around and found another manufacturer that could get units to us within a week. It’s like if you only drive Fords or Chevys and need to make a choice for something else if you want to work, you make that choice,” John says.
American Pride has also experienced surprise deliveries of new equipment. “We had two tow-behind units that were back-ordered but came in two months sooner than we expected. The manufacturer shipped them to us without any notice when one of their customers cancelled their order. We turned around and sold those two units quickly. We certainly didn’t need those two lifts at that time, but we were able to take advantage of the situation,” John says.
High-maintenance units are their specialty
American Pride also specializes in smaller utility equipment such as stump grinders and sod cutters. “Both are high-maintenance items and we have a reputation for having this equipment ready to work. We go over stump grinders thoroughly after every rental. We have three sizes of stump grinders and we work closely with renters to make sure they have the right unit for the jobs they have. These units wear teeth quickly, so we are always rotating, sharpening and replacing teeth. The same is true for sod cutters, they are high-maintenance pieces of equipment and we have a reputation for having units that work,” John says.
Data compiled by U.S. News & World Report pegs Sarasota as the third-fastest growing city in the United States with a 12 percent population increase from 2016 to 2021. It also lists Sarasota at or near the top 10 best places to live in 2022-2023. Castoro says that is reflected in their business, which has grown 33 percent annually since 2021.
“We have seen some great growth since the beginning of the pandemic and we think that is because of our commitment to service. We try to be the Seven-11 one-stop shop for contractors. Our level of service and ability to get contractors in and out quickly earns us repeat business,” says Joseph.
This article originally appeared in the July-August 2023 issue of Pro Contractor Rentals magazine, ©2023 Urbain Communications LLC. All rights reserved.
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