Born in 1997 as a roll-up, United Rentals quickly grew to critical mass, becoming the rental industry's largest company within a year. Over the next few years, it acquired more than 250 companies, presenting United Rentals with the daunting challenge of molding together disparate corporate cultures, practices and philosophies.

The founding of United Rentals, spearheaded by the unique vision of Brad Jacobs, a consolidation specialist who perceived the fragmented nature of the rental industry and its potential to attract investors, was an extraordinary achievement regardless of how one feels about its favorable or unfavorable impact on the industry. With some in the rental industry saying it could never succeed, and periodically predicting its imminent demise, United Rentals has continually defied expectations, confounded its critics and surprised the naysayers. Like it or not, United Rentals has reached teenage years as a company and is weathering the storm of a severe recession with a strong balance sheet and a clear direction and vision. Now run by experienced rental veterans, United Rentals is coming into its own as an operating entity with an increasingly efficient structure and sophisticated technology that may help it increase its already-considerable market share.

Now led by Michael Kneeland, a 33-year veteran of the rental industry, who worked for Freestate Industries' rental division and leading aerial rental company Equipment Supply, United Rentals' management seems determined to not just react to current market conditions but to look ahead to where the company needs to go. The current United Rentals blueprint is an ongoing, evolving one as the company looks to stretch the limits of what a rental company can offer to its customers.

Independent, locally oriented rental companies might, on the other hand, look at United Rentals and see little in common with a company clearly re-aligning its market strategy to focus on larger companies. On the other hand, United has to deal with the same issues smaller independents do — how to handle rate pressures, service equipment and respond to breakdowns as efficiently as possible, and organize logistically to deliver equipment to jobsites with greater precision and immediacy. And to drive rental penetration; how to expand the scope of services and professionalism it can offer.

The current philosophies of United Rentals stem from an extensive study of its customers the company undertook in 2008, and an overall strategic program known as Operation United. The company wanted to determine who its customers really were, what they needed and wanted from a rental company. On a more detailed level, United Rentals sought to figure out if it was fully meeting customer expectations and what processes it needed to improve its ability to accomplish that. It sounds simple enough, but a basic rule of business, ignored and glossed over by many companies, is understanding customers' concerns and priorities better than one's competition does and meeting them more completely.

United hired a third party to carry out the survey to avoid bias, interviewing more than 1,800 customers and customers of competitors. Some of the responses were not surprising, others were. Overwhelmingly, responses focused on several key areas.

One of the main key points was that customers preferred to deal with a single point of contact.

“We changed our sales structure to a single point of contact,” says Kneeland. “If you're a Peter Kiewit or a Bechtel, or any large organization, you would have an assigned account person so that if you have any need or dispute, the point of contact is the person who makes things happen.” With United's new sales structure, local customers are handled the same way.

The second major concern, not too surprising, was on-time delivery and pickup. However, they found that what mattered most to the customer was communication. “We found that as long as we communicate with them, with a high degree of reliability, they're fine,” says Kneeland. “What they were telling us is that most [rental] companies are very poor at that. They'd say, ‘We request first-thing-in-the-morning delivery with the hope of getting it before noon.’ That's not where you want this industry to go, that's not good customer service.”

Another major concern — more of a surprise to United Rentals management — was billing accuracy. “That was eye-opening to me,” says Kneeland. “This was right in front of us, but we didn't see it! Basically what they said was, ‘We're not administrators; we like to build things, we like to get things done.’ The last thing they want to do is argue over billing or have a pile of paper on their desks.”

The survey also suggested that no rental company clearly stood out in meeting these criteria or overall service. Kneeland and his staff then set about trying to determine how to re-shape the company so that these concerns would be met and that United Rentals would stand out. They concentrated their efforts in several key areas.