How to beat inflation when renting plant

In the last 12 months equipment manufacturers have been increasing their prices, in many cases considerably above inflation. This is putting pressure on users and buyers of plant who are being forced to reassess the viability of projects and increase prices themselves. And for rental companies this means that inevitably they are having to increase rental rates as well.

Plant users often overly focus on weekly rental rates as one of the main criteria for selecting plant when there are several more impactful factors at play. Fuel idling is frequently cited as a contributor to cost overruns. Several rental companies are starting to address this by looking at the total cost of hiring plant, not just the weekly rental rate. Ardent has focused on this for several years and has a comprehensive solution that helps customers to always minimise fuel idling.

A more significant contributor to cost overruns occurs when users keep plant for longer than is necessary. Here the additional costs dwarf any savings that are made on weekly rental rates. It’s not in a rental company’s interests to notify customers when they’re no longer using equipment or prompt them to off hire it. On the contrary, equipment rental is at its most profitable when the equipment is not being used.

Many site managers prefer to keep equipment on stand-by on a ‘just-in-case’ basis unaware of the costs that are stacking up. And many rental companies are happy to encourage this. Ardent has a different view. Our philosophy is to prompt customers to off hire equipment when it’s no longer being used. As well as reducing the overall total cost of hiring equipment this fosters a collaborative and partnership approach with customers which is our preferred way of doing business. The solutions we provide are digitally enabled and completely automatic which means that hires don’t get missed. We also provide an online portal, called Ardent InSite, that allows customers to manage every aspect of their hire online. As part of this they can see what is on hire and where.

Ardent is helping customers to beat inflation in other ways. For example, recently we helped a customer to reduce their dependency on road sweepers by using sweeper attachments on their rented telehandlers. Initially the customer thought that this wouldn’t be possible because the telehandlers were already highly utilised. Using Site Manager, we showed them that there were periods during the day where there was latent capacity. The customer offered an incentive to their operators to do the extra work and the overall initiative resulted in a substantial reduction in costs.

High levels of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis are worrying for many businesses and people. However, with some out-of-the-box thinking and a combined approach between suppliers and customers, savings are possible. If you’d like further information then call us at 03333 202 555 or email us at hire@ardenthire.com