I remember the very first time I spoke to Tom Bennett. He had just been named president of Prime Equipment and I was speaking to him on the phone for the first time. I was fairly new to the industry, and knew nothing of Bennett or his background, so I shot from the hip and asked why the company chose him. With typical Bennett candidness, without a second's hesitation, he answered: “Because I'm a street-smart guy and I know how to make money.”
The answer was straight from the heart and real. A polished public relations expert would not have approved of it, but it was true to the nature of the subject. Bennett's background is unlike the typical CEO of big rental companies these days. He started in the trenches as a yard guy, just like thousands of other yard guys who work in the industry today. He worked his way up because he worked harder than most and because he was indeed street-smart and knew how to make money. Over the past dozen years, I've had the opportunity to interview Bennett on numerous occasions about many an industry topic, and found that he always had something to say that made sense, and he could back it up by experience and first-hand knowledge.
Of course a lot of people's knowledge, good business sense and rental expertise went into building Prime, now RSC, into the billion-dollar-plus company it is today, people like Jerry Lane and Pete Post and hundreds of managers and drivers and yard workers and mechanics who won't get mentioned in magazines. Bennett emphasizes in his farewell interview on page 45, as he always has over the years, that the people closest to the customer — the mechanics, the delivery personnel, the service technicians, the sales staff — are the key people that make the rental industry great. They are the customer care people, the ones that make sure the customer is getting the service that they need, that make or break a rental company. If you lose emphasis on customer-care values, you lose it all, no matter how good your executives are.
Bennett knows because after 38 years, he has seen and worked at all those levels. He knows that whatever problems an organization has, whatever the ups and downs of a business cycle — and we are likely to see some downs in 2002 — if you keep up the vital link between the rental counter, shop and delivery people that makes sure a customer is getting the right equipment for the job at hand in a timely manner no matter what obstacles get in the way, if you honor and uphold that value above all else, you can succeed and thrive. And you'll come out strong on the other side of this downturn.
So this street-smart guy who knows how to make money knows that customer care comes first. Don't you forget it during 2002.
