PETERSON ENTERS THE RENTAL SERVICES MARKET

Dateline: June, 2007

On the first full day of summer, Peterson Machinery celebrated the Grand Opening of its newest facility: The CAT Rental Store. Over 300 people attended the event, making a big splash within the local rental industry. “I don’t think they were expecting this,” says Rich Bolen, Peterson’s new Rental Services General Mgr. “Everybody was excited and in awe of the professional image of our facility and what we have to offer the marketplace.”

Until recently, rental at Peterson Machinery was pretty much the heavy equipment variety. Enter Rich Bolen, a 14-year veteran of the rental services industry, who Peterson hired to launch them into the highly competitive market. “We didn’t have any allied product when I first got here,” explains Bolen. “It was all Caterpillar equipment - mostly heavy rents like 345s and 730 trucks; we had very little BCP or CCE inventory. And it was all under the Peterson RENTS umbrella in Eugene, Medford and Redmond.”

In December 2004, shortly after hiring, Bolen sat down and started ordering. Six months later, product started rolling in. Today there are over 600 items in the fleet, not counting all the attachments! That’s a 400% increase over when he first arrived ... mostly small, allied stuff like scissor lifts, light towers, trenchers, and the like. “That’s the nature of the rental services business," says Bolen. "Now, we’re more of a ... ‘Come in and rent this widget for 100 bucks - cash, credit, check or account. Great!’ Before it was ... ‘Sure, we can rent you a D6 for six months. Here’s the contract’. Now we do both ... all under one roof."

"Now we're a player ... an A to Z rental outfit."

- Rich Bolen, Gen Manager, The Cat Rental Store

On May 8th, the new CAT Rental Store opened its new doors for business at the former address of Tracer’s Truck Repair. The facility is perfect for a rental business, complete with a full service, 6-bay shop, plenty of office space, card-lock fuel station right out front, and acres of inventory space. The 15,000 sq ft. facility sits on 5.5 acres in Springfield, just 10 minutes northeast of the Eugene “mother” store. The lot backs up to I-105 (aka Hwy 126), affording excellent visibility from the freeway. “This is Peterson’s Shock & Awe,” says Bolen. “From the freeway it looks like the WalMart Super Center for equipment.”

“Traditionally Cat Rental Stores do not include rent-to-rent in their equation but because of the size of our territory, it works for us,” explains Rich. “We’re rental services AND rent-to-rent ... the A to Z model.” Peterson’s new CAT Rental Store combines the traditional heavy equipment rentals with the large inventory, retail-oriented, high transaction, one-stop-shop mindset of the rental services business. And by the looks and comments of the customers coming through our facility so far, it’s definitely working. "This is just the beginning," says Bolen.