Manufacturers and rental continue tireless efforts in relation to cleanup and reconstruction efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s been crazy trying to keep up with all these demands and take care of regular customers and new customers at the same time,” Danny Cloy of Crawler Supply in Baton Rouge, La., told RER. “We’re renting equipment for cleanup work mostly – loader backhoes, skid-steer loaders with grapples, forklifts, excavators and everything. We’re almost out of equipment and Case is working with its dealers across the country to send me more machines. I rented 21 pieces to a contractor going up to New Orleans to work on the sewage system.”

“We’ve placed orders with a lot of manufacturers the past seven days because the orders exceed our available inventory,” said George Robertson, Baton Rouge branch manager for RSC Rentals. “Fleet managers from all around the country are working together to get us more equipment.”

The cleanup and reconstruction efforts are likely to be going on for a long time. “A lot of cleanup efforts are just starting and after about 60 days, re-construction work will kick in,” Robertson said.

A manager of a NationsRent branch in Baton Rouge told a local reporter visiting his near-empty yard that if he had 1,000 more pieces of equipment, he could rent them out “right now.”