Whatever 2020 was, the rental industry is glad it was not 2008.
“We didn’t see business as usual,” says Josh Nickell, vice president of the American Rental Association’s equipment segment, “but we did see decent business.”
The pandemic’s impact on rental operations was far from universal, however. Rental operations that were more connected with the DIY/smaller contractor market had a good year. “Most rental companies are doing just fine,” Nickell says, “and some of them had their best year ever.”
How rental operations fared in 2020 depended on the markets they were in, agrees Scott Cannon, president of BigRentz, which operates an online rental platform for around 4,000 primarily small and mid-size rental firms in the U.S.
Rental companies connected to retail saw slowdowns, Cannon says. There was little bandwidth for maintenance activities that involved rental equipment, such as aerial lifts, even if a retail company was doing well. Homebuilding, on the other hand, was robust.
But the rental industry remains healthy, Cannon says. “People weren’t capital-constrained or overextended, so we didn’t see any partners have financial challenges.”
