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Like the general manager of any other EquipmentShare branch, Ernest Aldridge leads an efficient team of dedicated sales, service and logistics pros. He has a large fleet of new construction equipment. His rental equipment is connected to the T3Ⓡ platform, which gives his customers the actionable data they need to get the most from their machines.
All that’s missing is indoor plumbing.
“We like to call it the back 40,” Aldridge said with a laugh about the branch he’s managed for the last three years on a Texas megasite where a massive industrial facility operates and continues to grow. “But we operate as a full branch. We have a parts department. We have an office trailer. It’s set up just like any other branch — we’re just in the woods.”
Aldridge’s site is one of a growing number of EquipmentShare on-site branches dedicated to meeting the needs of the general contractors (GCs) who are building the biggest projects. EquipmentShare has quickly established itself as the preferred boots-on-the-ground equipment rental partner for megasites, which can include data centers, manufacturing facilities, infrastructure improvements, sports and entertainment venues, hospitals and other very large and lengthy projects.
To keep huge jobs on track and under budget, GCs need a ready fleet of reliable rental equipment, responsive service, technical support and accurate billing. EquipmentShare can provide all that and more. Its comprehensive megasite program includes:
- A dedicated on-site team, including a general manager, service technicians, drivers, sales reps, rental coordinators, parts managers and telematics experts.
- An on-site equipment rental yard filled with the newest fleet in the industry, supported by a nationwide network of 326 branches.
- Office trailers, service stations, wash bays and fueling and charging stations.
- Tool and consumable trailers with a management system designed to prevent tool loss and excess cost.
- Fencing, barriers, gate control, turnstiles, jobsite cameras and communication devices for site access and security.
What also sets EquipmentShare apart is the people behind the machines and technology who help GCs solve problems — people like Aldridge, who become trusted partners.
“When you have a GC telling you, ‘We can call EquipmentShare at 2 o’clock in the morning, and somebody is going to answer their phone,’ that’s what they’re looking for,” Aldridge said. “We understand that our job is to get you up and running as quickly and efficiently as possible and be there for you.”
What follows is a detailed look at what EquipmentShare offers to meet the challenges of managing a megasite.
Cost savings and convenience
Control rental spending
Tyler Levins jokingly calls himself “one of the OGs” of EquipmentShare’s national accounts sales team. He has been working with major general contractors since 2020. In the last few years, he’s noticed a shift in their thinking about equipment rentals for megasites.
They can better control their rental spend, get more use out of each machine, minimize delivery charges and simplify billing by selecting an on-site rental partner that they and their subcontractors use throughout the project. That replaces the old model of allowing the subs to rent from a variety of off-site companies, each charging different rates with additional fees.
“You’re the GC in control of the project, and you’re making sure your client is staying within their budget,” Levins said. “So why are you letting your trade partners dictate your rental equipment, and then why are you letting them make a markup on it, because it’s billing to you and ultimately billing to the client?”
Managed billing
Speaking of billing, that can be a sore subject for GCs.
“The top two things the rental industry, as a whole, is historically bad at is communication and accurate billing,” said Ronny Robinson, EquipmentShare’s director of operations for national accounts. “It’s an accepted variable that as an industry, about 20% of the time, a rental company invoices a customer wrong, whether it’s on the purchase order, on rebates, on rates or on freight.”
Unlike most rental companies, EquipmentShare has built its own billing system within T3 rather than using a third-party system. That gives EquipmentShare the flexibility to offer its national account customers a managed billing option. An experienced billing expert personally approves every invoice before it goes to the customer to guard against inaccuracies. Also, EquipmentShare’s managed billing team can bill subcontractors on behalf of the general contractor, taking a big chore off the GC’s plate.
“We can co-brand the invoice for the GC and us, and we’ll apply the remittance as it comes in so they don’t have to dedicate resources to it,” Robinson said. “From what GCs have told us, depending on the scope and scale of the project, this can free up two people in accounts receivable and an additional two in accounts payable that would have been dedicated to handling billing for them. That can be a big cost avoidance.”
A no-lose tool proposition
As the director of EquipmentShare’s Tooling Solutions division, Grant Reviere has heard horror stories from general contractors who have lost over $500,000 worth of tools on megasite jobs. Reviere suspects those losses are more often attributable to carelessness or confusion than theft, but regardless, it’s a huge waste of money.
Reviere devised a system for EquipmentShare’s mobile tool trailers that has dramatically reduced waste and cost for general contractors. Those trailers are stocked with a customizable inventory of tools outfitted with bluetooth tags, which make them trackable in the T3 platform. The trailers can also include consumable items like hardware, PPE and welding supplies.
“On a megasite, when the job finishes, the general contractor didn’t lose a forklift, didn’t lose a man lift, but they might lose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tools,” Reviere said. “Our system and the way we utilize it greatly diminishes that.”
Each tool trailer can be staffed by an EquipmentShare tool technician who keeps track of inventory, repairs, certifications and outside deliveries. Each day, an off-site tool administrator sends GCs a report that details utilization rates to help them update the tool inventory to meet the needs of each phase of construction, as well as to plan for the next project.
“I always tell them that what we’re showing you is as important for your future jobs as it is your current job,” Reviere said.
Technology with a human touch
The T3 advantage
From the start, EquipmentShare has been both an equipment rental and technology company. And the product that has helped fuel EquipmentShare’s rapid nationwide growth is T3.
What is T3? It’s a cloud-based platform with a suite of apps that help contractors manage their people, materials and assets. Machines in EquipmentShare’s rental fleet are outfitted with T3TM trackers, and contractors can purchase T3 trackers for their owned equipment.
The T3 platform connects to equipment through hardware such as trackers, dash cams and keypads that replace universal keys. Those hardware pieces supply a constant stream of data into T3, allowing users to monitor the location, health and utilization of all their equipment and vehicles — regardless of make, model and class — on one platform. T3 allows users to view all of their equipment on an interactive map in real time, as well as providing historical data about each piece of equipment, which is vital for catching maintenance issues early to avoid costly unscheduled downtime.
“A lot of these megaprojects are data centers or AI-related, and the people building data centers want data,” said Connor Hurst, an EquipmentShare national account manager. “Nobody has more data than EquipmentShare when it comes to tracking assets, utilization, fueling and emissions reporting. We can offer that data with a clean viewpoint, so GCs can go back to their customers and show how they’re saving their customers money.”
Flexible tech
Before he became EquipmentShare’s director of business development, Anshul Sharma worked on the tech side of the company. He can attest that one of the great benefits of being a tech company is the ability to quickly build solutions to meet the needs of a customer.
“We are incredibly flexible,” Sharma said. “We will not say no — we’ll just figure out how to make it happen. The way you would like to rent a machine or access the machines on the yard could not only be different from customer to customer, it could be different for the same customer from site to site. We know that, and we’ll build what they need.
“For example, one customer had a yard that was run by one of our competitors, and it was a difficult process to get what they needed after normal work hours, because the site was running 24/7. They were shopping for other providers, and we said, ‘We’ll create a kiosk where your people can walk in, punch in all the information, it will show you what’s available for rent and what’s not, they can key in the code and drive off the yard with the equipment.’ We built it. Done. Here’s your on-site yard.”
EquipmentShare continually updates and improves T3’s capabilities based on feedback and requests from customers.
“What I like is our ability to say yes,” Levins said. “We don’t have a lot of red tape that stops us from figuring something out. We’ve got all these engineers working for us — they don’t work for a third-party company. So we’re not in a box. I can make one phone call to the T3 team and say, ‘Can we do this?’ Typically, we can.”
Separating the signal from the noise
EquipmentShare knows that data without context is just numbers on a screen. For that reason, an expert in T3 Analytics reviews the data from each megasite, identifies the exceptions — such as the pieces of equipment operating outside the recommended utilization rates — and regularly updates the GCs with fleet-management recommendations.
"Identifying areas to reduce your cost is what we built the program around. I don’t think anyone else in the industry is telling them to rent less to do their job."
— Ronny Robinson, EquipmentShare’s director of operations for national accounts
“Every vendor can send you a report, but these contractors don’t have time to look at data on 1,500 assets or however many they have,” said Josh Cook, EquipmentShare’s director of national accounts. “We put it in context and say, ‘Hey, these 30 assets, you probably want to take a look at. You haven’t used them in 72 hours. And down here, you’re putting 18 hours a day on this forklift, so you might want to get another forklift.’ So we’re giving them options, not just giving them a report.”
And if that means contractors spend a little less on a job than they otherwise would, it’s worth it to EquipmentShare to develop a long-term partnership built on trust.
“Identifying areas to reduce your cost is what we built the program around,” Robinson said. “I don’t think anyone else in the industry is telling them to rent less to do their job.”
Safety, security, simplicity
Jobsite monitoring
EquipmentShare offers Forsight camera systems that not only provide around-the-clock security monitoring of jobsites, they also can improve safety by identifying PPE violations and protect GCs from false claims by accessing historical footage and using AI-powered search to quickly retrieve video of specific events.
“If someone is walking across the job and doesn’t have a reflective vest on, it can identify that and through facial recognition tell you who didn’t have a vest on,” Robinson said. “It can identify that 13 people in this area of the job didn’t have a hard hat on. If the job isn’t running 24 hours a day, you can see through the Forsight camera that there was human activity on this jobsite at 2 a.m. when there shouldn’t have been. As far as camera product offerings, I think we lead the industry with our partnership with Forsight.”
Access control
Traditional universal keys offer little protection against theft and allow unauthorized users to operate. By replacing universal keys with T3TM cloud-connected keypads, EquipmentShare gives contractors control over who operates each machine, cutting down on theft and improving accountability. The contractor sets a code for each EquipmentShare rental unit, and only employees who are given access to the code can start and operate the machine.
To further guard against theft, contractors can use T3 to create geofences around their jobsites and receive alerts any time a piece of equipment leaves the geofenced area. And if a machine is stolen, the installed tracker allows EquipmentShare’s security team to follow its path across an interactive map and coordinate with local law enforcement to stop the thieves and recover the equipment.
Turnkey service
To successfully manage the largest projects, GCs need more than an equipment provider. They need a dedicated partner that understands their challenges and can make their job easier.
"When it comes to the ability to deliver on these massive projects, we know what we’re doing.”
— Anshul Sharma, EquipmentShare's director of business development
There are many equipment rental companies, but EquipmentShare is one of one in its ability to handle the needs of megasites.
“We’re not just an equipment rental company — we’re a solutions partner,” Sharma said. “We do so much more than give you your forklift. Yes, we will give you your forklift, it will be new, it will work and it will be in the right place at the right time. But we’ve also got cameras, we’ve got fencing, we’ve got turnstiles, we’ve got everything.
“We’ll overstock materials so you don’t have to worry about it. We’ll overstaff your site so you don’t have to worry about it, and then we’ll pare back as needed. We’re going to help you plan. We can manage your billing. We’re going to help you measure twice so you only have to cut once. When it comes to the ability to deliver on these massive projects, we know what we’re doing.”
— Ready to learn more about how EquipmentShare can help your biggest jobs run smoothly? Send our national accounts team a message.
