Photos by Northside Tool Rental

For a business to be successful, it needs to know what it is – what are its strengths and weaknesses, what does it do well, what does it not do so well. It needs to have a niche and know where it fits in the marketplace. For the leadership of Northside Tool Rental, 73 years in business, its mission is clear. 

The company’s strength is relationships with small contractors. With six branches around continually growing metro Atlanta, its ability to serve its clientele quickly and responsively is what enables it to have a strong place in this large city and its competitive rental market.

In a metropolitan area filled with mega projects, including an estimated nine data centers currently under construction, as well as medical facilities, shopping complexes and others, Northside doesn’t chase the big jobs. But, the contractors and large rental companies supplying those projects know where Northside is and knows it can respond and fill in with a tool or machine if needed. But its core customer base is elsewhere. 

“My description of a mega project is probably smaller than some other people’s,” says Northside CEO Josh Nickell. “If you’re talking about a hospital complex, to us that’s a really big project. We have relationships with a lot of those contractors and when they need a core drill in 30 minutes and they’re 15 minutes down the road from us, we have their backs. If their current supplier is out of something, we’ve got their backs. But if they need 40 scissorlifts for six months on a project, we just don’t have the buying power of the large rental companies.”

But Nickell points out that to serve small contractors in a city the size of Atlanta, a rental company needs to be able to service the needs of those contractors all across the city. 

“We have two southside locations and four northside locations,” he says. “Even a small contractor has jobs going all across Atlanta. And traffic is terrible, so they don’t want to drive to the other side of Atlanta to get something. So, you have to be close and local and be reactive and quick for them.”

The recent acquisition of Able 2 Rent-All and Patrick’s Rentals & Sales on the south side of Atlanta helped Northside round out its coverage of metro Atlanta by giving it coverage in both the north and south areas of the city.

“There’s a lot of integration work that happens to marry the customers from the north side of Atlanta with the south side of Atlanta,” says Nickell. “A lot of our customers work in both areas. In fact, the first day that I was training in the South Atlanta stores, the first customer who walked in needed something that wasn’t available in that store. But if a customer has a problem, we find solutions. It turned out he was working on the north side of Atlanta a couple of minutes from one of our other locations and we got him set up there. A lot of our customers are like that, they live on the south side and are working on the north side, or they live on the north side and are working on the south side. So, there’s a lot of integration and opportunity to really build out the business in a way we hadn’t been able to do before because now we have locations all around Atlanta and we can truly serve the whole local contractor base. 

“Before a contractor had to decide what company they would use on the other side of Atlanta. If they were customers of Able 2 Rent-All, they’d have to decide who they’d rent from on the north side of Atlanta; if they were customers of Northside from the north side of Atlanta, they’d have to decide who they’d rent from on the south side of Atlanta. So now we can serve the whole area in a way we couldn’t before.”

Working with small contractors, the importance of speed, urgency, responsiveness, and the ability to be flexible with credit are all important. 

“When you work with somebody on a really large project, such as a hospital or data center, the needs are different, the type of equipment is different, the processes are different,” Nickell says. “A lot of our contractors don’t know what they’ll need until they show up on the jobsite that day, or maybe they know the day before. We do a lot of work to build relationships with our customers. We’re not taking people on hunting trips. But we’re shaking a lot of hands and doing what we can to support them, be creative and quick and give them access to inventory so they can grow their business or start their business or deal with tough times when credit is tough.”

When Northside talks about quick response it might mean something different than it does at some other rental companies. 

“If employees come from other rental companies, and a customer says ASAP, that might mean tomorrow, which they know is quick for a lot of deliveries,” Nickell notes. “But when they say ASAP to us, I’m asking, ‘You want me to go load it up now and start driving it to you, is that what you mean?’ And they’re just blown away by how quickly we can react or are set up to react.”

Northside’s inventory is, essentially, what you’d expect from a rental center that focuses on small contractors. No 120-foot boomlifts, but plenty of 45-foot units. No 85-foot scissorlifts but plenty of 40-foot scissorlifts, which probably would not have been used much by smaller contractors 30 years ago, but are most likely used by them now.  Northside offers low-level access lifts, electric and diesel-powered. Plenty of air compressors, air tools, compaction equipment, concrete tools, mini-excavators, forklifts, telehandlers, compact track loaders, skid-steer loaders, attachments, lawn & garden and landscaping equipment, floor maintenance machines and generators.

Born in Buckhead

Northside Tool Rental was started by Roy Milling in 1953 in the Buckhead area of Atlanta on the north side of the city, which is how Northside Tool Rental got its name. Then surrounded by trees, the area is now highly urbanized, but still the north side of the city, about seven miles north of downtown.

Milling passed the company on to his children, Jim Milling and Joanne Lignugaris, and Northside is still owned by Milling’s grandsons, Jeff and Steffen Lignugaris. The brothers pretty much operated the business until late 2024 when they hired Josh Nickell as CEO to run the company and try to grow it to the next level. The brothers are still active with the business. 

Nickell has had extensive experience in rental, operating the business his father Tom Nickell owned, Nickell Rental, until his family sold it to Sunbelt Rentals. Nickell Rental was recognized four times by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. Nickell worked for Sunbelt for a few years, before getting an opportunity with software provider Point of Rental Software as director of global strategy. Nickell then worked for the American Rental Association as vice president of the equipment segment, technology and workforce development before returning to the front lines of rental activity with Northside.

The wide range of experience helped prepare Nickell for his current job. “I got the itch to work hard and be back on the rental side again,” said Nickell on why he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get back into full-time rental work again with Northside.

Cooper comes to Northside

Cooper Douville is a second-generation rental man, just like Josh Nickell. 

The Lignugaris brothers knew Nickell from his years as a friendly competitor with Nickell Rental. Cooper Douville also goes way back in the rental industry. His dad, John Douville, and Nickell’s dad worked together at Taylor Rentals years ago, and both were friends of Northside founder Roy Milling. Tom Nickell started Nickell Rental in 1995, and John Douville left to start Able 2 Rent-all shortly after that. He retired from Able 2 Rent-All in 2019 and Cooper took over the leadership. In 2021 Able acquired Patrick Rentals and changed its name to EQ. 

In 2022, Douville became involved in the startup of a general contracting company and helped grow it to about $40 million in revenue within four years. Douville grew the company and really got a taste for what it was like on the other side of the fence.

“It was tough,” Douville said. “There are a lot of fires to put out, a lot of excitement, definitely long hours, 80-hour work weeks, and a lot of stress. But I came back to rental.

“In 2021, we acquired Patrick Rentals. We changed its name to EQ Rentals, so we went from one to three locations and we ended up consolidating the two Patrick Rentals locations. Later on, in 2022, that’s when I got involved in the startup of a general contracting company, probably an ideal customer for some rental providers. We served the food and beverage manufacturing distribution industry, gained a lot of insight into some of the challenges small- to mid-sized contractors faced. The contractor company took off pretty quickly after about two-and-a-half years, and then I was at a crossroads about going further into general contracting or going back into rental.”

Douville chose rental and Nickell sees the benefits. “I think it’s really helpful for a rental company to have people like Cooper who understands what it’s like to be a contractor, especially a small contractor,” says Nickell. “You had to survive where you’re making last-minute decisions and if the equipment isn’t onsite, that’s holding you up and you need things last-minute. You’re not planning six months in advance for a job. And that’s really critical experience to have at an equipment rental company.”

“When I was a contractor, I was helping negotiate some of the rental contracts for some of the subcontractors,” says Douville. “I found a niche where I could almost be an equipment manager. I could subrent equipment for the subcontractors and found that I was able to get them good service and good rates. I was using Northside Tool Rental for a lot of my subcontracting. And here we are.”

Now Douville is regional sales manager, particularly on the south side of Atlanta. He’s also involved with integrating Northside’s processes into the teams who were originally in Able 2 Rent All and E2 rentals. I do a little bit of outside sales, a little bit of management in the branches,” Douville says. “That’s how I spend my time.”

People to people marketing

When it comes to marketing, Northside is similar to many other rental companies. It does some Internet advertising, brochures, social media and so forth, but above all it’s a word-of-mouth, relationship industry.

“Our best leads come from other customers or from people who stop in because their primary supplier isn’t available,” Nickell says. “Or they decided not to buy something, but they needed to rent it for now. We work really hard with first-time renters, learning about who they are, understanding their business and how to help them build their business. We had a customer the other day who had just bought a Mr. Handyman franchise. He started with four trucks and he dreams of having 20 or 30 trucks around Atlanta. We spent a significant amount of time with him. We talked about what his business is like, about what equipment we have that can help him take on more jobs and earn more revenue and build his business. Partnering with customers like that really early on when they’re small and they’re a credit challenge or don’t have any credit, that’s where I think we can really establish ourselves as different.

“At the end of the day it’s really about building relationships and helping other people. Contractors know each other, just like rental companies know each other. So, if you build the right relationships, that’s really where things work. We spend a lot of time on that. Our best marketing tool is our people.”

Let ‘em roll!

One of the strengths of Northside appears to be openness to change and trying new things. Northside doesn’t have a dedicated IT staff and as a result, people are encouraged to develop new ideas. 

Nickell and Douville talk about how different staff use different tools to make things work. “Some people like Chat GPT because it makes trackable things that are engaging and appealing to the customer,” says Nickell. “Some like Claude because it helps us build tools and code some things and create excel spreadsheets. One of the things we can do that a larger company can’t is avoid bureaucracy. We can move fast. I think it was Steve Jobs that said, ‘Move fast and break things.’ You’re not going to get in trouble for breaking something or making a mistake here at Northside. We want people trying things; we want people building things. We want people figuring out ways to make their jobs and their teams’ jobs better. We can move faster because it doesn’t take seven levels of approval and six committees to make a decision. You want to try something, go try it and let’s see what happens.”

Actually, the quote about breaking things has been attributed to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but we know what he meant about people trying new things. But do new ideas at Northside have to be approved by the CEO?

“No,” Nickell says. “It’s amazing how often I find out about things after the fact!”