If you’re planning on refreshing your fleet or adding some new equipment to your rental lineup, you better get that order in ASAP.

A recent poll of Construction Equipment Rental professionals shows that nearly 40% of all new orders are taking manufacturers over a year to fulfill. Almost 50% of respondents stated that fulfillment is taking somewhere between 6 to 12 months.

Considering these extreme wait times, there are a few tactics your shop can follow to navigate these challenging times. 

How To Stay Ahead of Long Fulfillment Times at Your Rental Shop

1. Improve the Scheduling & Timing of Preventative Maintenance

The success of your shop rests on your ability to maximize the life of your fleet. With preventative maintenance your key weapon in this fight, it’s critical you schedule preventative maintenance with certainty.

Many shops run a simple calculation based on the number of days an item was out in the field, but this leaves some guesswork that can result in negative outcomes:

• You conduct maintenance too soon, leading to wasted costs on parts & labor, and lost rental revenue while the equipment is in the shop.
• You conduct maintenance too late, which, over time, leads to an item that reaches the end of its life prematurely.

Having GPS trackers on your equipment that provide the hours of movement is critical to pinpoint the exact moment your inventory needs preventative maintenance.

2. Submit Your Orders Early

As budgets and margins are getting tighter, it’s critical to plan ahead and place your order as soon as possible. As demand for equipment grows in the Spring and Summer, it’s critical that your equipment is on track to arrive in the same window of time.

Waiting until April to order a skid steer needed in July simply won’t cut it.

Check with your dealer on lead times for the items you’ll need next year, and get in line now, if necessary.

3. Protect Your Equipment From Loss

The National Insurance Crime Bureau estimates that 1,000 pieces of heavy equipment are stolen each month. With a recovery rate of only 20%, the odds of recovering your equipment are not in your favor. 

Even if insurance covers the entire price for a replacement, you’re still without rental revenue for the entire time it takes to purchase a new item - which, as noted above, is taking over a year for 40% of all new orders. 

Using GPS trackers on your rental equipment is not only a great way to manage inventory, but it can also help in the recovery of equipment that was stolen or gone missing.

Beyond basic GPS services, Spytec GPS offers features that are ideal for the construction rental industry:

• Trackers with tamper alerts to let you know if a tracker has been removed
• Secondary “ghost trackers” begin tracking if the main unit is removed
• Location sharing with renters via a simple web link to help coordinate delivery and add accountability to renters

Learn more about GPS tracking for equipment here. 

Interested in learning about Spytec’s GPS tracking system and how it can streamline operations? Click here to connect with our team.