Chris Pera, former president of Modern Equipment, has formed the HiReach Group, a new aerial equipment rental company, in King of Prussia, Pa., along with partners Rick Raab and Shawn Deegan, also former Modern staff.

The company is focusing on providing rental, sales, service and parts of aerial and rough-terrain forklift products, representing the full line of JLG equipment. The combined experience of the owner operators is more than 100 years in the industry.

HiReach Group is also supported by Minneapolis business partners John “JT” Kubiski, Joe Novogratz, and Don Beaupre of Beaupre Aerial Equipment. Beaupre, a former National Hockey League goaltender who played in the NHL for 17 years, began his company in Minneapolis in 2003.

“It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur,” Pera told RER. “We’re going to manage to our size, and not forget who we are. We have conservative and ambitions plans over the next couple of years.”

HiReach Group opened its doors for business two weeks ago, with 10 employees.

“We basically started without a paper clip and we’re building it up from there,” Pera said. “We’ve had a lot of help to get it started.”

HiReach Group is located in a renovated 50,000-square-foot facility on more than three acres of property strategically located just off the Pennsylvania turnpike.