SmartEquip Inc. announced today that Bryan Rich has joined the company as executive chairman of its board of directors. Rich is a 30+-year veteran of the equipment rental industry, having begun his career at Logan Equipment in Boston in 1978, and having recently led the buyout of NationsRent, serving as its executive co-chairman from 2003 to 2006. Rich subsequently served as vice chairman of Sunbelt Rentals after its acquisition of NationsRent, until late 2007.
Both Logan Equipment and NationsRent were early adopters of SmartEquip technology and Rich is a significant equity holder of the company. Over the past year, Rich has served as special advisor to SmartEquip’s board of directors and also led several key strategic initiatives.
“Over the past decade, the SmartEquip network has grown and the company uniquely positioned itself to provide an industry standard for fleet efficiency and procurement within the construction equipment and rental industry,” Rich said. “The company’s need for a disciplined operational growth strategy has increased significantly, especially during the most recent world financial meltdown. During this period, SmartEquip customers, as well as the entire industry, have been challenged with finding meaningful gains in efficiency and ways to do more with less, and a growing number of industry leaders have turned to SmartEquip to help them through these challenges.
“My mission is to lead and support the SmartEquip team to deliver to its customers a highly usable, timely and stable product that could ultimately, and in short order, make the SmartEquip network the industry standard procurement and fleet efficiency platform for all to measure against.”
“I am very pleased that we are going to the next level, which is that Bryan is joining us as our executive chairman,” SmartEquip CEO Alex Schuessler told RER. “He will join our board of directors and lead it, and he will work in very close partnership with me in a very active way for us to take the company to the next level of growth.”
SmartEquip is based in Norwalk, Conn.
