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Stay Safe and Keep the Faith

March 1, 2016
More and more people are getting trained in aerial work platform safety and it can never be emphasized enough how important it is.

More and more people are getting trained in aerial work platform safety and it can never be emphasized enough how important it is. The idea behind this month’s cover story is not to re-write the safety manual. It’s not meant to contain everything you need to know. I was more interested in sometimes overlooked points like a branch manager who walked around his rental center to check all the aerial work platforms and discovered that far too many of them had safety decals that had been scratched or were peeling off or painted over. 

Injuries don’t always happen at 150 feet. Some happen right on the ground, sometimes just getting in and out of the machine. Or loading and unloading a scissorlift on a slippery trailer in the rain. Or people who think it’s important to wear a safety harness at 135 feet but fail to attach it while they’re driving around a jobsite or even a rental yard and they hit a pothole or rock or some kind of debris and it catapults them out and sends them flying. Yes, it happens. 

Attention to safety with aerial work platforms is a lot of little things that add up to a safe environment. Or a safety culture such as when NES Rentals refused to rent to a customer because the driver felt the jobsite was unsafe. Mike Crouch of Acme Lift points out a saying among pilots: “taking off is optional.” It’s a lot harder to change your mind once you’re up in the air. It’s kind of like the inconvenience of your flight being delayed because of a maintenance issue. Maybe that inconvenience is better than the plane going down? The same thought process should apply to equipment rental. 

So please check out our “40 Aerial Safety Tips.” If you’re in the aerial rental business, you’ll likely know most of them. But I expect there will be a few ideas that might be useful. 

These are common sense tips from rental people who notice things over the years. So take them to heart.

• • 

Just before going to press with this issue I got the sad news that former Prime Equipment CEO Tom Bennett passed away of cancer.

I first spoke with Tom when I was brand new with RER and he was named president of Prime Equipment. I called him up and got him on the phone right away. I didn’t know much about the industry at that point or what to ask him so I just asked why he was chosen for the job. I can still hear his voice on the phone as though it was yesterday saying “I’m a street-smart guy and I know how to make money.”

Prime went through a couple of changes of ownership in the ensuing years, and ended up merging with RSC and the rest is history. But from what I know, I’d say Tom described himself well in that one sentence to me on the phone in 1990. Not always popular with competitors, but a hard-working rental executive, I recall Bennett as a strong believer in the concept of a one-stop shop, wanting his company to always be the one that could respond to any request a customer had. He believed in a wide-ranging inventory, in having quantity to make sure he could meet customers’ needs, and if the customer wanted something his company didn’t have, then you go out and get it for him, if possible.

Bennett believed that the rental business was a 24-hour one. Of course he was based in the Houston area and always did a lot of business with industrial accounts and petrochemical firms that did business around the clock. 

Bennett started in the rental business working in the yard and ended up CEO to one of the industry’s largest companies. Along the way he was mentor to many. I remember when he retired saying he was looking forward to spending a lot of time at his ranch. I hope he enjoyed those years and our sympathies go out to his family. We’ll have more to say about Bennett in next month’s issue.

• • •

The Rental Show in Atlanta was well attended and buying activity was solid, according to exhibitors. The American Rental Association said it was the best attendance in 10 years, going back to pre-recession 2006. Similarly, World of Concrete said attendance jumped nearly 8 percent, best in seven years. The California Rental Association Rental Rally grew its attendance considerably as well. All these are positive indications of an upbeat attitude and economic well-being. So keep the faith.