Herc, Sunbelt, United Rentals: Equipment Rental Buying & Pricing

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That's helpful to know that it's still a relatively small portion of the total. I've been trying to understand, and I've heard different data points from different people about this, so I'm curious how you might characterize it. I'm trying to understand how much equipment pricing might vary for different customers, like Sunbelt and United being the two largest in the industry, and how much better the pricing they might get would be on an excavator relative to the next tier down, like Herc or Sunstate, and then the tiers below that. I just want to get a sense of how much variation there is depending on who the customer might be.

Being a large customer doesn't necessarily drive the discounts; it depends more on the volumes they're looking at with us. In the range, I would say between Herc, who we do the most business with today, they get probably the best discount. Then there's maybe a 3% to 4% gap between Sunbelt and Sunstate type businesses that we don't do as much with today but hope to grow. We're just starting to develop those categories with these customers. United isn't quite on our map because of the sheer discounts they want on some of their products and the capacity we have at the plant. We wouldn't be able to manage our business well if we had to go after United, who's buying quite a few loaders or excavators, especially in the current environment with the supply chain.

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If Sunbelt and Sunstate are 3% or 4% behind Herc, how much would the gap be between them and a single branch rental company?

The independent companies would be higher, about 15% more.

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