Ashtead Plant Hire, parent company to Sunbelt Rentals and U.K. rental company A-Plant has automated its 27-foot onsite tool rental trailers with RFID technology. A-Plant developed the system to minimize the frequency of visits from its own staff to the construction sites. The use of the RFID chips ensures the customer only pays for the tools and equipment they actually use.

The presence of a trailer on a jobsite eliminates the need to transport tools back and forth from a store.

U.K. firm 4hSolutions developed the system that involves a passive low-frequency RFID tag attached permanently to each tool kit, a box that contains a tool and its associated attachments, as well as an RFID reader that snaps on to and off the kit.