AED’s “Driving for Dealers” Bus Tour Seeks Support for Infrastructure Legislation

Associated Equipment Distributors staffers embarked on a 10-day multi-city bus tour to visit equipment dealers across the Midwest, Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and the West.

Michael Roth

Sept. 18, 2020

2 min read

Associated Equipment Distributors (AED) staffers embarked on a 10-day multi-city bus tour to visit equipment dealers across the Midwest, Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and the West. On the first day, stops include two in Illinois and one in St. Louis. The purpose of the tour is to highlight the critical need for federal infrastructure legislation.

“A new, long-term, sustainable federal infrastructure bill is critical to moving our nation forward,” said AED President & CEO Brian McGuire. “Infrastructure jobs will go a long way toward economic recovery as we hopefully begin to move past the pandemic.”

AED leadership is meeting with key equipment dealers across eight states. “We want to hear first-hand the impact an infrastructure bill will have on our members,” said AED executive vice president Robert Henderson. “We will use the data and anecdotes we collect to demonstrate this critical need to the U.S Congress as they consider legislation to replace the Fast Act, which expires on September 30.”

Concurrently, AED is engaged in an unprecedented grassroots outreach campaign to U.S. Senators. To date, 75 percent of AED members have generated more than 800 letters to their U.S. Senators.

(Left to right: Brian McGuire, AED President and CEO; Junior Kool, founder of Vermeer Midwest; Steve Kool, CEO, Vermeer Midwest; Darin Martin, general manager, Vermeer Midwest)

About the Author

Michael Roth

Editor

Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.