Rental center -- Simply awesome
Awesome Sales and Rental approaches equipment rental a bit differently than most equipment rental centers. Equipment stays in the fleet as long as it’s in decent shape and dependable.
By Clair Urbain
Awesome Sales and Rental got into the rental business in a novel way. Owner Jim Higgins wanted to dig a pond on his property in 1984 and told his wife he wanted to buy a backhoe loader. “She said I couldn’t afford a new one, so I bought a used Case 580C and dug my pond. Then I brought the backhoe into my business and started renting it. That’s how I got into the rental business,” says Higgins. “We began buying used equipment and fixed it up and put it into the rental fleet. It was obviously the wrong way to enter the business but there was little guidance back then.”
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Jim Higgins, owner of Awesome Sales and Rentals, has one rental center co-located with his Do It Best building supply store in Tuscola, Illinois, plus another outdoor power equipment rental and sales location in Champaign, Illinois. |
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Awesome Sales and Rental is co-located with Higgins’ Do It Best Tuscola Home Center.
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| Awesome Sales and Rental is a leading Toro dealer in Illinois; Higgins says trenchers and Dingo stand-up track loaders are very popular with contractors. |
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| Mini excavators are a high-volume rental item; Higgins has nine units ranging from 9,000 to 35,000 pounds. His wide assortment of attachments is popular for rentals alone or with excavators or track loaders. |
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While scaffold rentals are on the decline, Awesome Sales and Rental has experienced increasing rental of pull-behind and self-propelled manlifts. The majority of Higgins’ rental equipment is gone over in the winter months so it’s ready for the approaching spring, summer and fall seasons. |
Higgins and his wife, Kay, have been in the outdoor power equipment business for 51 years, starting out by buying a Western Auto store in Tuscola, Illinois in 1970. “Western Auto was big into auto parts, appliances, bicycles and sporting equipment and I wanted to get into the hardware business, so we became a True Value hardware store.”
Decades later, sensing a need in the area, he decided to get into building materials supply and became a Do It Best hardware store in 2001. Then, in 2010, he and his wife purchased the local lumberyard and vacant 50,000 square-foot building that was a large, high-end clothing store and an auto dealership in its past life. Today, the store is 30,000 square feet of retail and the rental display is an additional 4,000 square feet. The store sits in the heart of Tuscola, serving east-central counties in Illinois. The repair shop is for rental and outdoor power equipment plus five service bays with lifts for automobile maintenance, yet another part of the business.
In 2005, they opened a rental center in Savoy, which is just south of Champaign, Illinois and about 20 miles north of the Tuscola store. “It’s the only equipment rental store on the south side of Champaign and is 6,000 square feet with additional storage in kit buildings which we also sell,” Higgins says.
Their son, Brent, who Higgins says is his right-hand man, can do everything in the business, plus handles the technical aspects of the business. “We use Total Rental software from Epicor because it nests well across the rental operation and the Do It Best building materials center,” Higgins says.
The Savoy store is an equipment rental center and outdoor power equipment sales and service center that’s open six days a week; the Tuscola rental center is co-located with the Do It Best store. “Because it’s in the same building as the hardware and building materials store, we are open seven days a week at that location,” says Higgins.
Each rental store is staffed by 10 people. Counter persons are cross-trained to handle equipment sales as well as rentals; each location has small engine and general equipment maintenance technicians and each facility has yard workers who take in returned equipment as well as load rented equipment and make deliveries.
“The best counter people are ex-contractors,” says Higgins. “They understand the jobs our contractors are doing and are very good at offering advice on the right equipment for the job.”
Higgins pegs his investment in rental equipment at about $1.5 million. “We keep equipment far longer than most rental centers. “We don’t flip equipment like the national chains. As long as it’s clean and dependable, I’ll keep it in my fleet. We fix and clean up equipment over the winter months. I figure I don’t make any money on rental until the unit is paid for, so we keep equipment much longer than most rental centers.”
Combined sales and rental revenue across the two stores is $6 million annually. “Outdoor power equipment sales are very low profit margin. Rental on the other hand, is very profitable,” Higgins says, “The two work well together.”
Over time, Higgins says equipment demand has changed. “We used to have four backhoe loaders, but no we don’t have any. Small excavators and compact track loaders are in high demand now, and we are known throughout the area for our large assortment of attachments for utility equipment. Power box rakes are very popular rental attachments and we are the only place in the area with tree spades available for rent,” he says.
Awesome also rents many point breakers for compact track loaders and skid steers, but finds they often come back needing repairs or maintenance. “Even though we tell them not to, many operators use the point breaker as a pry bar to break off concrete. That’s very hard on the seals and if they are used this way, they will leak,” he says.
Instead of a point breaker, Higgins and his staff will recommend using the Stanley Cyclone drop breaker if the customer will be breaking up flat concrete. Similar to units used to break up concrete on highways, but on a smaller scale, the drop breaker works faster than a point breaker and is easier on equipment. “It uses hydraulic power to raise the weight and then drops it. It really does a number on concrete and can work five times faster than a point breaker in the same application.”
Over his years in the rental business, Higgins has seen just about every kind of equipment damage caused by renter misuse or neglect.
“Manlifts are becoming more popular all the time, but more than once we’ve had renters use them to take down trees and end up dropping the limbs on the machine. We had another renter who thought the control panel on the manlift was frozen, so he took a heat gun to it and literally melted the panel, which cost $3,000 to replace, and then tried to blame us for storing the unit outside, which froze up the panel. The first thing we have in our rental contracts is that if you have trouble with the equipment, call us. Too few do that and that’s when we see damage,” he says.
Higgins admits that he’s too forgiving in equipment damage situations but says he can quantify what it will cost to fix the equipment. On the other hand, he has no idea what the cost would be if the customer goes away disgruntled. “The adage about an unhappy customer telling 10 others in a month is true, but today, with technology, one unhappy customer can do that kind of damage in 10 seconds. Our counter people address customer complaints or issues by responding, ‘What would make you happy?’ That usually works and we have a happy customer who will share their positive experience instead of one who will talk badly about us. That level of integrity drives this business.”
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