Fleet owners are losing money by simply forgetting how much equipment they have on site, according to Tim Hyer the CEO of Getable, a mobile application for renting construction equipment.
“Twenty-five percent of equipment on jobsites sits idle 15 days past its last use, which is just a lot of wasted money,” said Hyer.
Getable aims to increase cost efficiency to benefit both consumers and suppliers of construction equipment.
It started as a general rental application only available in California, but then rebranded itself after identifying an opportunity to improve the efficiency of the construction equipment rental process.
Backed by a $5 million investment, Getable expanded its services nationwide in early 2015.
“You have this audience, contractors, that needs equipment all the time,” said Hyer.
“Sure, they would first go to their company-owned equipment in their internal yard, but so many more contractors are renting.”
And data shows contractors are embracing the rental market more and more.
In fact, the American Rental Association estimates that half of all heavy equipment used on construction jobs is rented and forecasts that the U.S. equipment rental market size will grow 8.1 percent in 2015, reaching $28.5 billion.
Despite rental’s rising popularity among contractors, there hasn’t been a streamlined process of obtaining a piece of equipment from a vendor, until Getable.
According to Hyer, it can typically take up to 90 minutes for a contractor to procure a piece of equipment, between making multiple phone calls to track it down, finding the best price and arranging for it to get to the job site.
By using a mobile app, the entire process can be completed in a fraction of the time.
Users first download the free mobile app and log on as either a contractor or a supplier. Contractors looking to procure a piece of equipment can choose from 20 different product categories, ranging from heavy earthmoving to light equipment.
Users can browse by different specs to find their desired piece of equipment and specify job site information including the location, time and point of contact for the delivery.
Timeliness is a strong point of the app, delivery times automatically default to the following morning. Users also choose between a “drop-off” or “pick-up” option for returning the machine.
Once a piece of equipment is booked through Getable, it is tracked through the entire time it’s in use. The app monitors the running cost of the equipment and alerts users via email or automated notifications on the app on a weekly basis. The alerts let contractors know how much they are spending on their rented equipment any given day, week or month.
“You can see a full activity history, going back to the day it was ordered and see all the different points of interaction people on the job site have had with the piece of equipment,” Hyer said.
If contractors are done with the equipment before the set pick up date, they have the option to call it “off-rent”, which takes it off their hands financially.
“Off-rent basically means, I’m finished with the equipment, stop billing me,” Hyer said.
Rental companies looking to rent out their equipment also can download the app at no charge, logging in as supplier. The supplier is provided a dashboard of all the open orders in their area and can submit a quote accordingly.
Getable suggests pricing and the supplier can either choose to honor it, or set their own rental rates.
Getable also factored in the pre-existing relationships between contractor and supplier. “More often than not, they are being invited by contractors,” said Hyer. “Contractors are prompted to invite their preferred suppliers when first signing up.”
Contractors can choose a familiar supplier or make a decision based on price, location and availability, which the app displays in the checkout process.
So far, Getable has attracted approximately 150 equipment vendors and garnered a few thousand individual users who are using it as their primary mode of renting equipment.
