How An Excavation Contractor Unearthed Rental Spend Savings

“We have planes these days where you can hit a button, find an airport, check the weather, make an emergency call and the plane lands itself. And yet, we have guys out here struggling to know the location of a bulldozer,” said Bartley Stevenson, owner of Milam Excavating Corporation, a residential and commercial excavation company based in Columbia, Mo.

Stevenson works hard alongside his team every day to get the job done – which involves moving dirt and rocks on a site and prepping the area for building. With the construction industry on overdrive as more and more new build outs take place throughout the country, there is no shortage of work in excavation – a fundamental part of the process.  

“I work on all types of build projects and with most, if not all, of the contractors in my surrounding area. I need to make sure my team and my equipment are always ready to go because one misstep can turn into a bad game of telephone, which spreads like wildfire in this business,” said Stevenson. 

One of the greatest challenges in construction is being able to control the chaos and all the moving pieces that take place on and off the jobsite. If one machine goes down because of maintenance issues, or another gets stolen, or a bill doesn’t get paid, it has a domino effect on the entire project. 

“There is a lot out there in terms of telematics systems, but nothing that gives me the visibility and insight into my entire fleet – which is a wide variety of brands, makes and models. It was only after renting with EquipmentShare that I learned I could also use their T3 technology on my own equipment,” said Stevenson.

EquipmentShare’s T3 Tech Extends Beyond the Rental Experience 

‍EquipmentShare’s rental platform is powered by T3 technology, an operating system that tracks, monitors and manages equipment, vehicles and other gear on the jobsite such as Conex boxes, attachments and buckets. In real time, customers who rent from EquipmentShare can access insightful data about their rentals such as GPS location, machine health, upcoming rental cycle and spend. Rental customers are also able to control access to the equipment through keypads, a solution that replaces universal keys, as well as set up geofencing for projects and helpful alerts. T3 is OEM agnostic and can be installed on owned assets, as well as integrated with existing AEMP feeds (including, but not limited to John Deere, Takeuchi, LinkBelt, Hitachi and Hyundai) unlocking visibility into a contractor’s entire fleet and more.

Within minutes of having T3 hardware installed on his fleet, Stevenson was able to see all the information on his equipment, as well as his rentals, side-by-side, in one place.

“Utilization ties directly in with job-costing. It lets us know how much it’s going to cost me to move the machines around, how much time the machine has spent on a particular jobsite, or if we have too many underutilized machines on a jobsite. There could be five machines on a jobsite for three months, when we really only needed four for two of the months. But, we left all five there because nobody knew any better. By optimizing my own fleet with T3, I reduced my rental spend by 20-30 percent.” 

Stevenson now has more control over his fleet. And when he sees in T3 he needs to supplement equipment, he can easily add rentals to his jobsite with the click of a button. 

“For the first time, I did not have to log into three or four different telematics systems to get an idea of what’s going on. T3 gets your right hand talking to your left hand. It is a gamechanger. I was always taught, business can be simple if you earn more than you spend. So, it doesn’t matter if T3 costs a dollar or $40 as long as I’m saving more or earning more than that.”

EquipmentShare’s team members are located throughout the country and want to be your go-to partner for the long haul. We are dedicated to solving construction problems – whether that’s through rentals, T3 technology or service. We want to earn your business, help you enhance your overall productivity and ultimately save you money. We don't want to lock you in on a long rental contract and make you pay for machines you aren’t using. We give customers the tech and insight they need to make better and smarter business decisions. We want to help you take control.

We know it’s not what you expect from an equipment rental company; it’s better. 

Learn more about how T3 technology can power your operations.