Gene Torrence sat by himself on the porch of a small building without furniture on Airline Highway in Baton Rouge. Nobody was calling on the phone and a delivery truck and a 120-foot manlift was in a ditch and the driver was blaming him. After leaving a good position as manlift division manager for Head & Engquist Equipment, he wondered what possessed him to put everything he owned into starting his own rental company in the late 1990s, the era of consolidation. Everybody he knew told him he was crazy and he wondered if they were right.

But Torrence had a willingness to work hard and do what it took, with a love for the rental business and aerial equipment. With his then-partner, Anthony Lubano, and one mechanic, John Reed, Torrence delivered and picked up equipment, helped fix them in the shop when he had to, and worked however many hours it took to get the work done. Torrence's wife Brenda, a legal secretary by profession, joined Aerial Access doing a little of everything and is still with the company handling legal and property issues, payroll, human resources, insurance, collections and a wide range of general services.

Already armed with nearly 30 years experience in the aerial rental business, with contacts and friends among contractors and customers he'd worked and talked with for decades, Torrence was confident he could build a rental business. Torrence gradually began surrounding himself with top-quality service personnel, people he'd worked with on and off for years or even decades, men who knew how to fix machines. A lot of people could replace parts and get machines operating, but not everyone could understand and diagnose complex problems — but his people could. He also found sales people with relationships and history in the industry.

Aerial Access Equipment grew to four locations and a market area extending from Houston to Pensacola, Fla., with a fleet of more than 1,400 machines. Aerial Access grew the old-fashioned way with relationships and exemplary service in a market segment dominated by national companies where contractors depend on national account relationships for discounts and don't like to jeopardize that elite status by giving business to a local guy.

“We understand that,” says Torrence. “So we go after the contractors that go inside the plants, we build those relationships. Relationship selling, that's our forté. We can compete with the big guys because they are more focused on the bottom line where we're more focused on personal service, personal attention. You need decisions made, I'm right here. They come and ask me and it's ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

Torrence says when a dispute arises, Aerial Access mostly favors the customer. “If I have to issue a credit for $500, it's usually no problem; I want that guy's business next year. We don't have to call a regional vice president, and the regional vice president doesn't have to call somebody else to do credits. These are decisions that we make every day. Being locally owned, offering 24-hour service, the relationship building we do puts us in front of the customers.”

Torrence and his staff do marketing south Louisiana style by building relationships and friendships. Some of those friendships go back decades — they grew up together, went to school together, started out in the job force together. In a lot of cases, Torrence and other top Aerial Access people knew contractors when they were starting out and now have evolved into decision-making positions with the companies they work for.

“I spent a lot of years in outside sales and got to know a lot of people,” Torrence says. “And that's what helped me with this business. All those years I worked for other guys, although I wasn't making a whole lot of money, I was meeting a whole lot of influential people. Some of them were just workers [when we first met] but now they've gotten to be head guys and we're still friends, so they do a lot of business with me.”

But Aerial Access staff can build all the relationships and friendships they want but without providing strong service it would be for naught. Given the level of experience it has, differentiating itself with service is a natural.

“I've got guys who have been with me for 38 or 40 years,” says Torrence, referring to his years with other rental companies before founding Aerial Access. “I bet I've got 300 years of equipment knowledge. Our strength is we've got guys who cut their teeth on manlifts. We can rebuild a machine from stem to stern, we can fix just about anything. Our competition just removes and replaces parts, in my opinion. We stock $1 million worth of parts. We have 17 service trucks that carry a full complement of parts. When we go to a jobsite we have hose crimpers, batteries, starters, alternators, solenoids, switches, everything we could need to fix it unless it's an oddity.”

“We probably have more hands-on hours in this company than any other rental company,” adds service manager and long-time Torrence associate Mark Jones. “[Practically] every one of us in this company has 20, 25 years or more of experience.”

In addition to experience, they have attitude. “I've got guys who would break their necks for me and the company,” says Torrence. “If I need something delivered on Saturday or 10 o'clock at night, it takes one phone call.”

Out of the ditch

Once that 120-foot boomlift got out of the ditch, everything turned around for Torrence. He took delivery on 30 units from Snorkel, put them out on rent and before long was ordering 30 more. Soon Aerial Access had developed a niche in the shipyard (fabrication) business.

“We were buying used machines for 30 cents on the dollar and renting them to shipyards for really good rates,” recalls Torrence. “We held that business for a while but then 9/11 hit and a couple of national companies moved into town and started going after me.”

The economy hit a downturn at that point and in need of capital, Torrence looked for investors. In June 2004, Atlanta-based Source Capital purchased 75 percent of the assets of Aerial Access. Source's Tom Harbin, now Aerial Access' chairman, bought into the company, along with his sister Kate and Source partner Thomas Vandermuelen, all of whom joined the board of directors. Still a 25-percent owner, Torrence continued to run the business, dramatically growing the fleet to where it is today.