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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: United Rentals reaches high and gets down and dirty on the North Slope Already a strong rental business for homeowners and contractors, company looks to resource industries for growth Dawnell Smith PNA Contributing Writer
For most of the summer, the United Rentals equipment yard on the Old Seward Highway looked like a vacant lot. Booming construction in the Anchorage area as well as the North Slope and elsewhere kept most of the store’s inventory of earthmovers, aerial lifts, residential tools and other rental equipment in the field.
“It’s been an interesting year … just an exceptional season for construction in general,” said Anchorage branch manager Jeff Benkert.
Homeowners and builders lined up for backhoes and dump trucks while companies in the oil fields ordered aerial boom lifts, heating equipment and other specialty gear. Even sales went up this year due to large orders for aerial equipment by a wide variety of oil companies.
Whatever and wherever the job, United Rentals strives to put the best equipment into the right hands through a massive inventory that runs the range from bulldozers and articulated boom lifts to snow blowers, lawn mowers and pressure washers.
Major projects include the expansion of the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, construction at Dimond High School, the building of the new downtown jail in Anchorage, the reconstruction of the Old Seward Highway between Dowling Road and Dimond Blvd., the housing expansion at Elmendorf Air Force Base, construction of the Fred Meyer store on Abbott Road and the BP natural gas-to-liquid plant at Nikiski. Gearing up the Far North In 1999, United Rentals acquired Stephans Tool at 9760 Old Seward Hwy. That rental company had more than 20 years of experience serving local construction and residential customers.
Once United took the helm, it positioned itself to expand into a wider range of clients, including oil and natural gas industries, embracing the resource industries as an untapped market for specialized rental equipment.
The oil patch is “an area we’re pursuing and getting more business from,” said Benkert. “We’re really just getting our feet in the door … We're not lessening focus on local markets, we’re just broadening our horizons.”
The Old Seward Highway branch is part of the United Rentals corporate family, which has about 750 branches throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.
United’s vast reach helps individual branches through buying power and inventory.
“We’ve got pretty limitless resources to find equipment,” said Benkert, who also manages the store on Commercial Drive in Anchorage.
Service workers back up the company’s rental and sales business. The Old Seward Highway branch alone employs 10 mechanics, two outside sales staff and another 10 workers in parts, counter and dispatch positions. Power in numbers Based in Greenwich, Conn., United Rentals Inc. is the largest equipment rental company in North America. In all, it rents 600 types of equipment that make up a 500,000-strong total inventory with an original value of about $3 billion.
The selection includes water pumps, air conditioning units, heating units, generators, industrial equipment, heavy machinery, aerial lifts, homeowner tools and equipment designed for traffic control, trench safety and special events.
The breadth and depth of the company’s fleet and coverage make United a hot ticket in financial circles. The corporation ranks 30th on Fortune's list of the 100 fastest growing companies and 529th on the Fortune 500.
United has earned its ranking as one of the country's fastest growing operations by purchasing some 250 rival rental houses since its founding in 1997. Last year, the conglomerate earned nearly $3 billion in gross revenues — a 31 percent jump over the previous year — and about $176 million in net revenues. With that growth, the corporation's total employee base increased by 8.5 percent to nearly 15,000 people.
United Rentals still has plenty of room to grow through purchases of smaller rental stores. More than that, the company has the buying power to negotiate lower prices for equipment than smaller competitors.
Service, parts and sales add to the United Rentals business mix. For example, the company is a distributor for heavy equipment makers like Honda USA and Genie Industries.
Aside from the two Anchorage locations, United Rentals also has stores in Wasilla, Soldotna and Palmer. Equipment in the rubble The sheer size of the United Rentals fleet made it invaluable to the rescue efforts after the terrorist attack in New York. The company provided 100 light towers, more than 500 generators and 1,500 diamond-blade concrete cutters to help with rescue efforts at the World Trade Center.
The company contacted 35 rental branches within a two-hour drive of New York. With so many stores in the area, United Rentals quickly corralled light towers and generators to aid rescue workers in an area of southern Manhattan that had no power.
The company also helped supply flatbed trucks, sports utility vehicles and earth-moving equipment.
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