As construction projects across Southwest Florida continue, Herc Rentals needed to expand to meet the demand for its equipment.
This month, the construction supplies rental company cut the ribbon on its third and newest facility. Located in what had been a recreational vehicle dealership at 5600 Enterprise Parkway in Fort Myers near the Interstate 75 and Luckett Road exit, the facility showcases forklifts, tractors, loaders, light towers and a plethora of equipment for use indoors, as well.
“Southwest Florida—anybody who’s paying attention knows there’s a lot of activity going on,” Herc Rentals Chief Operating Officer Aaron Birnbaum said. “A lot of construction, right? It’s actually from Sarasota down to Naples. It’s become a top 50 construction market.”
The ongoing boom means contractors need more equipment.
“There’s a shift going on in the marketplace, where more of equipment you see out there is a rental asset rather than an owned asset,” Birnbaum said. “We own it, but we’re fleet management people. So, we’re experts at it. We can own it and manage it and service it and get it in the right spots so it gets the right utilization, as a professional company would.
“That’s our mandate, and that’s how we generate growth and profits for the organization.”
In 2015, Herc Rentals moved its corporate headquarters to Bonita Springs before separating from former parent company Hertz in 2016. Since then, the company has grown from 270 to 420 locations that combine for about 7,500 employees. Southwest Florida has three of those locations and is planning a fourth, a new construction location in Punta Gorda.
Birnbaum could have been joking that the contractor would be using Herc Rentals to build it, except he was serious.
“It’s part of that market-sharing economy that’s happened,” he said.
Including the corporate headquarters and three rental stores, Herc Rentals has about 600 employees in the region.
The publicly traded company has about $6 billion in assets, Birnbaum said.
The business model, he said, works because of the operating expenses of the equipment.
“You try to move it, it’s expensive to move it,” Birnbaum said. “Who’s going to service it if it breaks down? And the contractor has learned there’s just better options out there than owning it, paying the interest on that piece of equipment, trying to put capital on that equipment. Where they can just rent it for as long as they need it, and then they can just turn it back in.”
