Have you cut sales staff?

No, that's the last thing you do. We have our normal attrition but our sales force is roughly the same size as it's been the last two years.

Are there any areas of the country that are fairly solid where prospects look pretty good for this year?

We continue to see positive signs coming out of the Gulf and the mid-South. We see glimmers in our eastern branches. Site specific we've still got some very large construction going on, some pharmaceutical and retail space continues to grow in some pockets. There is business out there, we just have to keep chasing it and hope our competitors do the best they can on staying rational on pricing.

Any sense of how long it will take to turn this economy around?

I think what we've seen in the last month is kind of a bottoming out, hitting bottom on the pricing and utilization trend. We're seeing both a seasonal uptick and in some of our warm markets, some return to normalcy, so we're hoping that's not a false spring. We see — like many economists — a recovery in the out part of this year or early next year but it will be a slow climb back. We think with the lack of new equipment being manufactured and the continued reduction in fleet sizes by many of our competitors, we think as we get some growth back we'll see some return to rational pricing and utilizations.

How much did you reduce your size of fleet?

We're probably down 3 to 5 percent in fleet size, but we're reducing our variable costs and keeping our powder dry for the turnaround. We're doing the normal amount of fleet sales that we'd be doing at this time of the year.

Did NES age its fleet significantly?

No, we had a pretty good capex spend last year. The fleet that we have sold this year has been older, so I'd say we'd probably be about the same.

We know NES' volume is down but is profitability down comparably?

We're private, so we're not going to go say too much. But I would say we're not struggling as mightily as are some of the public companies. I guess the way to give you a non-number answer is we're ahead of our plan for the year for the first quarter.