Fifty years is a long time for any business to remain relevant. If you don't think 50 years is a long time, consider that 50 years ago Dwight Eisenhower was president, cars didn't have seat belts yet, the Beatles were still in high school and it would be another 22 years before ESPN would come along!
It's not easy for a magazine to survive that long and still be vital. Fifty years ago Life magazine, Saturday Evening Post, Look, and Sport were important titles at newsstands and where are they now? A magazine, like any other business, has to change with the times when necessary and be ahead of its time as often as possible.
As for RER, I'll let you, our readers, decide for yourselves if we've lived up to that criteria. I hope you enjoy this issue as we look back to see the events that have come before us. As we prepared this issue and set aside nearly 40 pages to review the history of rental as RER has reported it, we realized 40 pages couldn't come close to telling all the stories. We include as much as possible, and a more complete historical overview can be found on our website www.rermag.com, including many of the stories we couldn't fit in these pages.
And if there is more from the past that you'd like to know about, tell us. Don't be passive; we need to hear your voice. Because in 50 years, we've covered theft, consolidation, insurance, rate issues, manufacturer-rental company relations and just about everything still going on today. And we're still going to be here next month and next year and we'll tell more stories that matter from the past and look even more carefully at the issues of the present and the future.
RER was the first publication to cover the world of rentals. RER founder and first publisher Jim Gartland recognized that these disparate “rental yards” scattered around the country were not just “junkyards” as some people thought, and not just isolated businesses, but in fact were an industry that needed a voice and a vehicle to debate and define itself and look ahead.
RER was formed by hard work and dedication as Gartland perused telephone directories from around the country, wrote down about 4,000 names of businesses by hand and thereby compiled RER's first mailing list. In researching this young industry, he started by visiting dozens of rental centers, often with Acme Rents' Bill Grasse, who would write for the magazine for the next four decades. Gartland's close colleague John Hagens helped guide the magazine for two decades, as did his son-in-law Tim Novoselski, who many of you know well. And many others, too numerous to mention, have given energy, blood, sweat and brain power to RER.
We no longer have to hand-write the mailing list, but we have to give our best efforts to make sure we're on top of trends and keeping up with the challenges and changes confronting our readers. We continue to visit as many rental companies and manufacturers as possible, in North America and around the world.
The magazine has also evolved and changed and matured over the years because you, our readers, have stuck with us. Through good times and bad times you have turned our pages and answered phone calls from our editors, taken time out from your busy days to show us around your rental businesses and manufacturing plants, and explained your products and processes. In return we've done our best to tell the truth and tell your stories as honestly and completely as we could. You've forgiven us when we've made mistakes, you've let us know when you thought we've got it right and not been shy if we were wrong.
So now it's our turn to thank you. A magazine can only survive if people read it and give feedback to its staff, and our audience has been as good as a readership can possibly be. I don't know what the next 50 years will bring, but I do know we'll continue to work hard to tell it like it is about the rental business.
As you look through this issue of RER, you may notice it looks different. We've changed our logo and the look of the magazine, and we are proud of the creative efforts of our art director Andrea Neasby Porter. We'll continue to improve it in the coming months and we look forward to your feedback.
With all that said, here's to all of you and another 50 years!
