As a manufacturer and a rental house, Pro-Tec Equipment has the luxury of sometimes instantly adding new equipment to our rental fleet.  We are able to solve problems quickly that a normal shoring rental operation may not.  Of course with this blessing comes a curse.  There will come a time when we don’t have most of our eighteen 28’ or longer trench shields rented.  When that happens, there will be a hungry, smelly, 800 lb gorilla in the controller’s office wondering how such a thing happened.

In Michigan, we have faced the struggles that the rest of the nation is now experiencing for the better part of this decade.  During Michigan’s “One State Recession”, our customers went from a significant interest in purchasing to overwhelming interest in renal only.  Sales to end users in Michigan were few and far between simply because there wasn’t a backlog of work to count on.  Our rental numbers increased year after year and profitability went up.  During this “One State Recession”, we added to our rental fleet.  We needed to.

Yes, our rental additions were scrutinized, but in the end, we decided that it was too important to service the customers that remained busy.  We still have some equipment deficiencies in some areas.  There has been too many times where we gave our customers what we had instead of what they truly needed.  Overall though, we have unofficially taken the attitude of “if we have it, they will come”.  It is much easier and more profitable to pluck something out of the fleet than it is to worry about logistics, availability and freight.

The rest of the country will not completely sink to the depths that Michigan has had to endure.  We know that the rental market will stabilize.  Service is the backbone of this business.  A well fleeted company will be able to service their customers better.  It may be a good time to add to rental fleet right now and when you do, Pro-Tec Equipment is the obvious choice to do it with.  So obvious, we are almost like an irritable, mistreated 800 lb gorilla.