Acquiring a small business

My family owns a decent sized one. We have 5 locations. We bought a local company that has been around for 25 years. We expanded to 5 locations within 2 years. There is a huge market for it. We rent anything from smaller chainsaws to 86’ boom lifts, to any size skid steer and excavator you’d need. Seems like the market is all over the place, but we are very busy. Last year being the busiest.
We are family run for the most part, with a few employees, less than 10 typically. Having good employees will make it much easier, but they are extremely hard to come by. Pretty much the same problem most every small business struggles with.

Lately I’ve come to realize that the pricing of the rentals doesn’t matter quite as much as you’d think. We keep it quite a bit cheaper than everyone around but United and sunbelt is such a giant that 90% of contractors pass the bill to the customer and could give a shit about the price. If your target customers are homeowners and smaller business, then they’re the ones you have to cater lower pricing to.

Sunbelt and United have bought a lot of equipment places around us within 100 miles, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before we get an offer so they can control everything.

 

The other thing about the whole new and used equipment deal, I’ve realized over the years is new equipment hasn’t gained us much. The customers scratch, dent, and damage anything they can possible get their hands on. It’s upsetting seeing 100k skids with 500 hours on them and they are looking 5 years old already. They obviously pay for major damages, but you can’t charge them all for every little scratch.

We also work on all of our own equipment, and new stuff is in the shop just as much as used stuff. Matter of fact i like the older shit more than the new stuff.