Custom Truck One Source Jumps Double-Digits in Rentals in Third Quarter
Custom Truck One Source Inc., a leading provider of specialty equipment to the electric utility, telecom, rail, forestry, waste management and other infrastructure-related end markets, posted $152.7 million in rental revenue in the third quarter of 2026, compared to $127.1 million in the third quarter of 2025, a 20.1-percent increase. Equipment sales dropped a little, from $320.6 million in the third quarter of 2025, to $309.6 million, a 3.4-percent drop.
Total revenue for Q326 was $495.2 million, compared to $482.1 million, a 2.7-percent increase. Total revenue from external customers in the specialty equipment rental area was $212.0 million compared to $182.9 million in the third quarter of 2025, a 15.9-percent increase.
The Specialty Truck Equipment and Manufacturing segment posted $442.2 million in total revenue compared to 408.1 million in the third quarter of 2025, an 8.4-percent hike.
“In the third quarter, record demand across our core T&D markets drove 16 percent year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth and 24-percent growth year to date, and we are raising our full-year adjusted EBITDA outlook for the third time this year,” said Ryan McMonale, CEO of CTOS. “Our SER segment continued to benefit from strong utility end-market demand, with our rental fleet generating a record quarterly average OEC on rent of nearly $1.4 billion and average utilization of 81.5 percent. We also ended the quarter with record total OEC of $1.76 billion, providing strong visibility into continued SER growth through the fourth quarter and into 2027.”
“In STEM, orders grew 22-percent year-over-year and backlog reached $342 million, and the third-party deliveries that shifted out of the quarter are scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter. Our earnings growth also drove a further meaningful reduction in net leverage, to 3.70x. As we look to the remainder of 2026 and beyond, CTOS is well positioned to participate in powerful secular trends, including utility grid upgrades and transmission expansion, electrification, data center-driven load growth, and infrastructure spending. We remain disciplined in executing our strategy, with a focus on profitable growth, strategic capital deployment, free cash flow generation, and continued deleveraging. Increasing our investment in the rental fleet reflects that discipline as we put capital behind visible, long-duration transmission demand at attractive returns, with the larger earnings benefit arriving in 2027.”
For the first nine months of the year, CTOS posted $1,502.3 million in total revenue compared to $1,415.8 million in the first nine months of 2025, for a 6.1-percent increase. Rental revenue was $435 million compared to $364.2 million in the first nine months of 2025, for a 19.4-percent increase.
Custom Truck One Source, based in Kansas City, Mo., is No. 14 on the RER 100.
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.
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