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    1. Rent Talk

    The RER 100 Turns 25!

    May 18, 2011
    The RER 100, which will be released next week, showed, to quote RSC's CEO Erik Olsson — and a nod to Charles Dickens — a tale of two halves. Most of the RER 100 companies spent the first half of 2010 in the doldrums, many feeling as though they had ...

    The RER 100, which will be released next week, showed, to quote RSC's CEO Erik Olsson — and a nod to Charles Dickens — a tale of two halves. Most of the RER 100 companies spent the first half of 2010 in the doldrums, many feeling as though they had reached bottom. So it was the proverbial “bouncing along the bottom” and that bouncing can be pretty stressful on one's spinal column, not to mention their company's bottom lines.

    The second half, for most, brought a noticeable change: Far more customer demand and optimism; improved utilization; even rising rental rates, albeit not rising enough. Those developments brought far better margins — and for many, it brought margins back into the black. The margins may not have been much to scream about, but red ink was replaced by black nonetheless.

    It's no secret to anybody that the recession these past few years has been fierce. We'd be talking about a lot more casualties — both among the RER 100 and the industry as a whole — had so many companies not de-fleeted, decreased the size of their staffs, concentrated on paying down debt, and put expansion and growth plans on hold. And for many companies, there were great leaps forward when it came to improving efficiencies with creative technological approaches.

    I spoke with or had e-mail dialogs with executives from a majority of the companies on the RER 100, and almost all said 2011 was starting out better than recent years, with more consumer and customer confidence, more demand and utilization. As one CEO, a hands-on guy who loves this industry, said to me, “The business is starting to be fun again. I'd forgotten what that feels like.”

    The top 10 of the RER 100 — the big players — were much like the rest of the RER 100 in terms of their overall numbers. The top 10 declined in 2010 less than 1 percent year over year, just like the rest of the 100 companies. For the most part they were flat but are starting 2011 strong.

    So enjoy reading the RER 100, soon to be in your mailbox and on our website at www.rermag.com. This is the 25th year of the RER 100, including its first few years when it was the RER 50. Carry it along in your pickup truck or on your computer.

    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.