We would keep, you know, earth touching equipment like skid steers, excavators, that kind of stuff. Usually three years. That was kind of our, our amount of time because at that point in time you generally had still a really good machine that you could sell locally. A lot of rental companies really focus on auctioning equipment.

We very rarely ever auction equipment. We like to sell it into our locally. With our stickers on, it creates another synergy of business to where not only can I take care of customer B or C, so-and-so on their rental side. But I can also take care of them on service and purchasing side.

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Today was another busy day of just not having much stuff to, to wreck people, making long lists of, of, uh, we’ll call you backs . Oh, man. How does that make you feel? It sucks. Yeah, it’s, it’s kind of a good problem to have, but it kind of sucks too at the same time.

Cause as you can’t, you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we take into the grain of salt. I mean, it is one of those things where, you know, we’re, we’re happy that we have the equipment that we do have, and we’re happy that we can, we’ve been able to buy some more and, and get some more equipment in. So try to, try to make everybody happy, which is difficult.

So, but it’s, we’re, we’re glad, we’re glad to be able to try. Have you gotten any new equipment since the hurricane or, um, maybe some new equipment right before the hurricane? Yeah, we had gotten some new excavators, um, before the hurricane. We had gotten in since the hurricane. Some lightly used track skid steers that we bought at auction, but they came from a dealer that we were kind of knew the history on, which is, you know, kind of one of the scary things we’re buying from auction sometimes.

But we were able to, to do that, we bought some, you know, Interior demo stuff that we usually don’t keep a tremendous amount of stuff like tile removers and different things like that. So try to grab stuff where we can and um, and we’ve been able to finally get some updates on some equipment that’s coming in, so we’ll be seeing a good amount of excavators coming in before the end of the year, which will, which will be very helpful.

Nice. That’s awesome. What do you think your maybe top two things are that people are renting right now? Right now I would’ve to say stump grinders and skid steerers. Yeah. Followed really quickly behind with excavators. So really excavators, uh, really anything to do with tree removal. So you’d have your stump grinders, your skid steerers, your excavators, and your boom lifts are all waiting list equipments right now.

That’s crazy. Boom lifts as in like a tree trimming boom lift, or. Like installing your tree with the booms on the skid steer? Oh no. Mainly for, uh, the tree trimming. So either the towables like, I think you guys have gotten from us sometimes. Right, right. Or, uh, more of like the all trained four by four ones you see on the job sites.

Um, you know, we, both of those have been in very high demand. Nice. That’s awesome. Um, I bet you see a very different, um, in terms of use usage in the machines, the amount of hours. For when it’s post hurricane versus on a normal basis. Is there a big jump in the hours when you, when you rent public to people right now?

Yes. Yes. And so much higher hour, much higher hour utilization, much higher hours on the, the, the machine. , um, pretty much everything that’s out is being used from sun up to sun down, which is tremendously more than than unusual job. Usually a general customer would use say, an excavator for three to four hours a day.

Maybe right now they’re running 10 hours a day, uh, which. Then is on the flip side, wear and tear is a lot higher on the equipment right now. So, you know, having the right people to service that equipment. But also the fact that we have been next day airing in a lot of parts and that is not something we ever do and we’re, we’re next day air and almost any part that we can get so we can get the machines back out on rent, um, was kind of causing a little bit of headache just because.

FedEx next day has not been tremendously helpful. I’ve had a lot of, a lot of stuff stuck in Memphis for some reason. I don’t know why that is, but, um, it’s, I’ve got no answer for it, but, um, but yeah, trying to keep equipment up and running that, that is getting a lot more usage and it really would ever get, uh, is definitely a little stressful, but it, uh, you know, it’s the name of the game right now and that’s, that’s what we gotta.

Right. That’s crazy, man. That’s totally wild. Um, do you feel like it’s, you would rather be in normal business circumstances or post hurricane like you are now because now you’re crazy slammed. I mean, every machine you got is probably out. What do you, uh, what do you prefer as far as like business-wise?

Well, you know, it’s a double-edged sword. As a person, I prefer not to have storm related business. Um, you know, would I like to have this level of business more often? Yes. I, I would, and I, and I, I think anybody in business would lie to say they wouldn’t want that, but would they want that attached to a hurricane?

And I, probably, probably not what I would want just because there’s, you know, my, my family lost their house. Um, right. I, I luckily didn’t. Really any damage I found out now I have a roof leak, so I have a contractor coming out right after this phone call, um, to figure out how far that’s gonna be a problem.

So yes, business is, business is good. The, the flip side of that though is with everything being on r with so much equipment being on rent mm-hmm. , there’s the, then you get. On say, uh, what does everybody do during the day? Now we have everybody employed. We have no equipment to rent, so it’s, we can only sweep the same corner so many times.

We can only do, cuz if something doesn’t come in off of rent, then, but, you know, it’s, we’re not cutting people’s hours because obviously there’s the businesses there. The, the money is there and, and, um, so it, it’s kind of this new weird. You know, quasi weird world that we have to figure out, you know, how do we stay busy when we’re so busy,

Um, because on, you know, some of the back house stuff, it’s, you know, if nothing really comes in that day and nothing to, to go out, you know, there’s a lot of time to catch up on the, the, um, you know, putting up lights in the shop and taking, taking opportunities when we have a little bit of downtime to work on that.

So yeah, to say what I like this amount of business all the time. We’d probably burn ourselves out pretty quickly if we did do that. But, you know, um, it’s, it’s nice to have a business where we’re thankful to have the amount of business we do so that we could, you know, try to provide the, uh, flexibility for our employees if they’ve to deal with, you know, meeting with insurance agents and different things like that, you know, um, We’ve put together, we’ve always done a nice, uh, little bonus structure throughout the year.

Uh, growth month over year, over year, month growth. Nice. And so everybody got a nice, really nice bonus, um, this month. So that kinda, you know, every, puts a little smile on everybody’s faces. Um, We, uh, so we’re just trying to give back to our employees and try to keep a smile on everybody’s face while we’re really pushing through, you know, trying to get equipment cycled quickly, so, right.

It’s, it’s weird. One day it’s a crazy amount of stuff comes in and out another day, like today, we had a tremendous day of business as an equipment that’s on rent, but not a huge day of business and actual touches on machines. So it’s, it’s a weird, it’s a weird place. Real funky. That’s crazy. That’s awesome.

Um, what, so you guys also have service technicians that, that work there every day? Like, like come and like first, for example, I could bring by machine to you and you guys could fix it, or is that something you guys don’t really want to do? You guys only service your own stuff. How does that work with your service department?

So before this, uh, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of answers to that question. Um, before Covid, when we can get parts for everything. And there wasn’t this huge like parts, it, it was love it, bring it in, we’re gonna fix it, you know, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that. Bailey, you could bring in your trencher and I could pretty much guarantee that I’d have it if, if it was broken, you know, seriously broken, I guarantee I could probably have it back to you within a week, you know, if, if to, to get it in, get the parts ordered, get it in, and get it worked on.

Now I’m having stuff set for 6, 7, 8 months for people that, you know, wanted to pay for it now, but then when the park comes in now, don’t want to pay for it. We’re, we’re really, we’re really tightening up on the brands that we do the work for. We’re, you know, we’re a Wacker dealer, we’re a Toro dealer, we’re a steel dealer, um, Multiquip, or we’re really gonna, we’re really trying to focus it down onto those main brands that we know we can, a, get the parts.

B, our guys are trained to work on it. See you know, a lot of this stuff has become so, I hate to say it’s become so throwaway, you know, when the guy brings in the $300 Nikita drill and wants us to fix it for the seventh time, you know, it, it, it becomes, you know, not cost effective for him to do it.

Not cost effective for me to do it. So, yes. Um, And now with, with how wide open everything is with the business and how much damage and wear and tear we’re having on our own equipment, the the mechanics are, are staying really busy on our stuff. That being said, you know, we, we would love to do repairs on equipment.

Just really depends on the brand, the. Um, shape the equipments in, um, and what’s expected to be done. So each thing’s a little bit different than the other, but we, we don’t want to close off that section of our business, but we, we are having to focus a lot more on keeping our equipment that’s getting a lot more usage run onto it right now than than usual.

So we’re telling people if you bring it in, it may, it may stay here for a little while, but I think that’s kinda the same thing with everybody. So, yeah. That makes sense. That’s cool. Okay. I love that. So what is the, I feel like every time I come in to get something for you, with you guys, I feel like it’s always branding new or fairly new.

Um, Do you guys, how does that work with your equipment that you rotated? Because I see you’ll, you’ll also sell it. I feel like once it gets to a certain point, you’ll sell it. Is there like, um, a trick that, or not a trick, but maybe like a, a method that you guys do to always keep new inventory? How does that work?

Yeah, so again, let’s go, this goes basically back to the same answer that I had, uh, for the last one. Starts there in, in, before pre covid. We essentially would keep, you know, earth touching equipment like skid steers, excavators, that kind of stuff. Usually three years. That was kind of our, our amount of time because at that point in time you generally had still a really good machine that you could sell locally.

Uh, a lot of rental companies really focused on auctioning equipment. We very rarely ever auction equipment. We like to sell it into our local. with our stickers on it. Uh, it creates, you know, another, uh, synergy of business, uh, to where not only can I take care of, you know, customer B or a, B, C, you know, so-and-so on their rental side, but I can also take care of ’em on service and, and purchasing side, you know, we can do everything in-house, right?

Um, a lot of rental companies don’t really like doing that because it is a really multifaceted, you have to have kind of two, uh, mechanic streams, two, you know, bookkeeper streams. It takes a lot to do that. But now with, um, Equipment shortages. There’s a lot less used equipment being sold. Um, it’s, it’s demanding a higher price.

It’s staying in our fleet longer because it’s harder to get new equipment in. Um, you know, but we do like to be able to try to always have a newer fleet. Um, and I felt that we’ve. Again, up until pretty much covid, I could say we had one of the newest fleets in town when it came to excavator, skid steers, uh, tree tremors, you know, all that kind of stuff.

We would try to rotate that all. We wouldn’t want to let it run all the way till the end of its life and then auction it for nothing. We, we would like to try to, not to mention that also makes us a higher profit mar. If we could sell it at a younger age, try to make good money on it. Right. We’re selling somebody a working machine that they’re, they’re gonna be happy with.

Um, and, and it’s not gonna be in a week later broken down. Um, one thing we do with that, with, uh, the company that we sell Wacker, which is the excavators, the skid steers, um, they have a really good warranty company that they work with, and so, Um, most of the equipment that we sell used has a, uh, either an extended warranty or a factory warranty on it.

So the person that’s buying it is buying it with the knowledge that, you know, if this thing breaks in the year, I can bring it in and there’s a good chance it’s gonna be no charge for me to be repair, to be repaired. Um, so we can, we can move used equipment a lot better that way, and we can, we can sell an extended warranty on essentially any ma any machine we sell, we can do that.

And it really helps with the customer cause. You know, there’s a lot of questions when going and buying a used equipment. So if you know there’s something to fulfill you on the back end makes a sale a lot easier and makes it easier for us. Cause then we, we love bringing, bringing in for repair. Bringing in for repair.

It’s not gonna cost you anything. Right. Right. Hopefully. That’s awesome. So how does that work when, when something goes down like that, would the repair company then pay you back? So then it, you don’t get the hit. Yeah, so we would, um, so essentially if, I’m just gonna use a, for instance, say you have, um, say you buy a, a new skid steer from me or a used skid steer from me, it doesn’t really matter new or used.

Um, you buy one from us, essentially, we would be the authorized, um, repair facility for that. Uh, so you would bring it to us. We would order the parts. And we would, if we know that it’s gonna be a, you know, a full on claim, then we won’t even charge your credit card. We’ll just, we’ll, we’ll follow it all. If there’s ever gonna be a, you know, dis, you know, we don’t know how it’s gonna go.

A lot of times we’ll charge deposit on a credit card and then we’ll refund that to you later once we’re reimbursed by the, by the, uh, warranty company. But for the most part, it’s, it’s usually pretty cut and dry. Um, right. And even if you’re out in the field and. Stay, uh, the starter goes bad and it’s on the weekend and we’re not there.

And you have your friend who owns a, um, you know, an autobody shop. Come out and fix the starter, bring the receipt to us and we can reimburse you. Oh, wow, that’s cool. That’s pretty good warranty. So as long as, as long as this stuff isn’t damaged, you know, as long as it’s not damaged, as long as it’s a manufactured defect or, you know, a, a, a premature failure mm-hmm.

that it’s, it’s usually gonna be covered depending on which, which warranty is available on that machine. That is awesome. That is very cool. So your ideal customer, , um, do you, would you prefer residential or um, contractors? Where do you prefer? What do you fall? Fall towards? Mostly. Well, I don’t want to push anybody away, but we do focus generally on small contractors.

Uh, 25 people are under. That being said, I deal a lot with homeowners. Um, and we deal a lot with, uh, large concrete companies, that 500, a thousand employees, um, we don’t. Pigeonhole ourselves in one sector, but we do consider ourselves what we call the light equipment specialists. And so we generally, throughout the years, have really aligned ourselves a lot with the, you know, the five to 20 person, you know, size company that has kind of been our bread and butter.

That’s what we, you know, what, what we work with as a small local company. Um, but again, we have a lot of customers that are, you know, a, uh, a family that wants to come and just rent a, uh, A little towable lift or something to do some trees around their house or to put up, uh, Christmas lights even. Right.

And then we have, you know, I have multinational. Corporations that we do business with. So it’s, uh, it’s kind of across the board, but we do, you know, kind of focus on companies kind of like that, reflect what we are. That is awesome. I love that. That is something that I always come back to guys. There’s a couple, a couple reasons why, um, one, you guys are family owned.

And you guys are always in the, in the day-to-day operations. Um, and you guys are always there if we need anything. And another reason is your equipment’s always good. It’s always in in great shape. Never had an issue with it. And there was just one time where one a fuse went out or something stupid like that actually.

And you guys came right out and fixed it. And, and man, I, I love working with you guys. You guys have been, uh, definitely very friendly from the start right now. When I first first started, um, I think I, I met your dad first and then I met you, and then I met some of the guys in the shop and it was, it was always cool to, after a long day dropping off a piece of equipment or early morning getting.

Um, definitely get a, definitely get a different feel walking into your shop versus some of the other ones around town. Um, the other ones are okay. I mean, they’re, no, we’re not trashing ’em or anything. Um, we’ve used them as well, but there’s definitely a family feel and a family brand, I would say with all star, and that’s something I really love about you.

Thank you for listening in. Stay tuned for the next part in this conversation. You can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts. And don’t forget the best place to rate or follow the show is@thelandscapecafe.com. The Landscape Cafe is a production of Pure Landscaping and the Niche Podcast Network. Learn more about Bailey, Katie, and the team by visiting Peer Landscaping

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