Although 12-year-old Boston Equipment is the new kid on the block, it was founded by owners of Action Equipment, which has done business in the Boston region for more than two decades. Now owned by former Action Equipment official Bill Gaffney, Boston Equipment is one of only a few independent rental companies on the Boston scene, but it appears to be holding its own, with revenue rising 15 percent or more every year. And even though the company is young, the principal sales and counter personnel are veterans of at least a decade of work in the Boston market.
Although Boston Equipment lacks the capital of its competition, the staff feels free to, as sales manager Brian Smith says, "work outside the boundaries."
"We don't operate with a large tier of management," Smith says. "Bill knows I'm going to try to make money on each deal, so he gives me a lot of leeway to do it. He has a lot of trust in us."
Boston Equipment handles the medium range of construction equipment, the largest being 100,000-pound excavators, 12-ton rollers, large rough-terrain and telescopic forklifts, and a few scissors and booms.
"Our main focus are the masonry, excavating and general contractors," Smith says. "We have everything from A to Z for the masons - forklifts, saws, blades, pumps. For the excavators, we offer compaction equipment, skid-steer loaders and a whole line of specialty equipment for the Big Dig."
Gaffney adds: "We took on the Schaeff line about three years ago. It includes a lot of specialty excavation equipment, things like concrete grinding heads mounted on rubber-tire excavators and swing loaders that save on space in the tunnels."
Business has been so good for Boston Equipment that it opened a new 6,000-square-foot branch in Salem, N.H., early this month. "We'll have a 100 percent equipment reconditioning center there, emphasizing the service end of the business," Gaffney says. "The equipment sales and repair areas, which haven't interested most of our competition, have enabled us to keep our margins up."
