EquipmentShare Website Closes $26 Million Funding Deal

EquipmentShare, an equipment-sharing website that enabled contractors to rent their under-utilized equipment, has closed a $26 million Series B round of funding.

Michael Roth

Feb. 3, 2017

EquipmentShare, an equipment-sharing website that enabled contractors to rent their under-utilized equipment, has closed a $26 million Series B round of funding. The primary business model is business to business, with contractors renting equipment to other contractors.

Last year EquipmentShare, based in Columbia, Mo., launched a telematics system called ES Track that enables it to gather data about equipment. The data is displayed on a digital dashboard that can be read from a computer or mobile device.

EquipmentShare co-founders, William and Jabbok Schlacks, plan to use their new capital to expand into new markets and to develop predictive analytics that can compare a machine’s data against a database of historic records to help anticipate breakdowns.

The Series B round of funding was led by Insight Venture Partners and Romulus Capital, including $6 million in shares that converted from an earlier Series A round and $20 million in new capital.

About the Author

Michael Roth

Editor

Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.