The sharing economy has expanded far beyond vacation rentals and car rides—it’s helping U.S. construction project teams control costs. Contractors and their project managers have begun turning to services like Yard Club Inc., a three-year-old U.S. startup that connects owners of idle heavy machinery with short-term renters.
With tighter federal emission-control standards raising equipment prices by as much as 20 percent, renting equipment has become an attractive alternative to buying. Renting allows companies to pay only when they need equipment, rather than shelling out a huge sum to purchase it, and then watch it sit unused for much of the time.
Industry analysts expect the share of U.S. construction equipment owned by rental companies to hit 60 percent within the next 10 years, up from 54 percent in 2014 and just 40 percent in 2005.
Machinery makers say the trend’s benefits outweigh the drawbacks, even though increased rentals hurt sales of new equipment.
Caterpillar Inc. executives say rentals extend their overall customer base. Not only has the U.S.-based manufacturer asked its own dealers to expand rental services, but last year it also invested an unspecified amount in Yard Club.
“You don’t know what the workload is going to be,” Manuel de Freitas of Platinum Pipeline Inc. told The Wall Street Journal, on why renting heavy equipment works for his project teams.
—Brigid Sweeney