MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Canadian rental company SMS Rents has relocated two Montreal-area rental centers into larger facilities, the company said last week. The St. Bruno has moved to a newly constructed 9,400-square-foot facility in Brossard. The former Dorval location has become one of the company's large rental facilities, totaling 19,000 square feet in Saint-Laurent.

Both locations offer the company more than additional floor and yard space, said Nicolas Gagnon, SMS Rents Quebec regional manager. “These locations will help us to better serve our growing customer base in the area,” said Gagnon. “Both stores are highly visible on major traffic routes. They make us more accessible to customers who are coming into the store for supplies and equipment. They also give our delivery drivers quicker access to the main roads and out to the customers' jobsites.”

The Broussard facility, to be managed by Marc Dube, was built to suit SMS Rents' rental operation. “We simply outgrew our old location,” said Gagnon. “Fitting our needs into the available space was increasingly difficult. Now we have a highly efficient layout, designed to meet our current and future plans to grow the business.”

The two-story Broussard building provides for additional inventory storage and training areas as well as showroom and service areas.

The Saint-Laurent facility, managed by Victor Carlos, has several new service bays and wash bays, fully equipped with exhaust systems and tools to service the store's rental fleet, as well as customers' equipment. “This will be a very useful facility for SMS Rents' customers,” said Gagnon. “Customers can bring in their own equipment for maintenance and repairs, and take away a rental unit to work on their project until the service work is completed. We're very proud of our equipment technicians here. They really know how to troubleshoot quickly and get the equipment back to work.”

SMS Rents president Marcel Langlois sees the new stores as an important step forward in SMS' long-range plans. “These stores have the facilities to operate as support hubs for additional sales and service locations reaching a broader regional market. They truly reflect the one-stop vision we have always had for SMS Rents, with equipment, tools and supplies, as well as being an expert resource for technical support and training. With our plan in place, our Quebec team was ready to move effectively when the opportunities appeared for us to take on these locations.”

SMS Rents, No. 86 on the RER 100, is based in Mississauga, Ontario, and has 15 branches in Ontario and Quebec.