New Tool hire business

[tom brent]

Hi All.

l have been planning to get into the tool hire business for the past few months and looked into what kind of tools l may need. l have managed to find insurers as well as hire software and a good location. l will not be doing any plant hire other than a scissor lift which may or may not class as a plant.
It will mostly be hand tools ranging from a drill to a breaker from a carpet cleaner to cement mixers. Where l am struggling to find data is what kind of tools hire out more than others and what l need more of or less of, can anyone help pls thanks.

 

[lazypbx]

- Talk to your target market and ask them what they hire.
- Phone or call hire center to check their equipment list, ask them about popularity and stock availability for a 'planned project'.

 

[The Byre]

Where I live, tool hire companies seem to come and go, like the snows of Winter and with depressing regularity.

With the price of hand-tools falling through the floor (I just bought a £180 Scheppach drywall pole-sander from Lidl for £70! Last year, it was a 1.2kW Einhell paddle-mixer for £40. Both rebadged 'Parkside'.) trying to rent-out quality tools is just getting harder and harder.

Larger, one-off pieces of kit like really large cement mixers and mini-diggers (i.e. expensive things people use once for a self-build, or trades use now and then, but not always) seem to be doing OK, but in a world where you can buy a 1.5kW breaker for £80 and a 2kW table saw that Screwfix sells for £250, is discounting at £100 (Lidl again!) hand-tools seem (looking in from the outside) to have become a hard-slog!

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

It sounds like you don't have any experience in the tool hire industry? Why specifically are you looking to get into this?

 

[Karllacey]

Agree with Buster here, this is not about tool hire business, this is R&D before you start business. Save your money and make your enquiries first and establish at least a gut feel that there is an opportunity to grow this

 

[tom brent]

Agree with Buster here, this is not about tool hire business, this is R&D before you start business. Save your money and make your enquiries first and establish at least a gut feel that there is an opportunity to grow this

Thanks for the advice but l come from business background already and tool hire seemed like a interesting and very different to what l do now thus a new challenge. Its not only a tool hire business l will also be selling accessories at the counter as well as including basic building materials in the future.
Any more positive advice out there?

 

[Karllacey]

Actually Tom, there is my positive advice. Carry out the R & D first, it would make a lot more sense. If you are indeed from a business background, carrying out due diligence before grabbing your balls and jumping is arguably the best advice you could get not just for this business, but any business. Equally so with a new product and service

 

[tom brent]

Actually Tom, there is my positive advice. Carry out the R & D first, it would make a lot more sense. If you are indeed from a business background, carrying out due diligence before grabbing your balls and jumping is arguably the best advice you could get not just for this business, but any business. Equally so with a new product and service

Thanks karl.

but l have done alot of reasearch and as basic as it sounds knowing which products are more popular and not the list of items l need is tricky, the industry is worth 2billion and speedy have 17% market share and hss coming in second so believe me lve done my reasearch but the moment l ask a question l'm treated to someone who doesnt know anything.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Can you compete with the Screw Fix or tool station prices if not then you will end up with very expensive dead stock. The more expensive items that people only need for a couple of days is probably a better bet things like Generators, Scissor Lift, large Rotavator and the like may be a opening, anything a high cost .

But as others have stated R&D is the main answer and posters on here are suggesting why they see problems to assist you in considering them not to just give negative answers

 

[Mr D]

Thanks for the advice but l come from business background already and tool hire seemed like a interesting and very different to what l do now thus a new challenge. Its not only a tool hire business l will also be selling accessories at the counter as well as including basic building materials in the future.
Any more positive advice out there?

I'd start with what you know first.
Then once that is built up then slowly add tool hire. Very different thing to focus on means opportunity for mistakes is bigger and your risks are less manageable.

Accessories at the counter and basic building materials? Already easily obtainable in some places. Is there a gap in the market locally for those?

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

My advice would be to spend some time working in the trade, or at the very least networking within the trade. You are not going to magically find a list on the internet titled "list of most popular things in a tool hire shop". That "data" as you say won't just be there, you need to go and collect it.

Why not try forums or facebook groups specifically for people who would be using your business - builders mainly I assume? Ask them on there what items they hire regularly, and what (if any) issues they have with tool hire that you could maybe address or do differently.

 

[The Byre]

Actually, some of us do know a thing or two. Small hand tools seldom get hired. This is a list from our local tool-hire people, more or less in the order of popularity, starting with the most popular at the top. I must point out that they deal almost entirely with builders and contractors and therefore these people carry their own plant and tool insurance and all have the necessary H&S training and certification.

• Power distribution equipment and Generators: 1KVA – 300KVA
• Site air compressors
• Heating, cooling and drying equipment: 3KW – 200KW heaters
• Fuel tanks and pumps
• Site lighting and mobile lighting towers
• Health and safety equipment, e.g. gas monitors
• Fume extraction and air moving equipment
• Drilling, breaking, sawing, cutting equipment
• Shot blasting and painting equipment
• Welding equipment
• Pressure washers, industrial cleaning and floor care
• Cargo trailers
• Surveying and test equipment
• Floor sanding equipment

They do not hire out hand tools and small versions of the above, as these are things people buy and do not hire. I was surprised to see that they do not hire out concrete mixers - but then I saw that the going rate was £70 a week for a £2,000 mixer at their competition!

As they are main area dealers for all the main brands, ranging from John Deere to Paslode, they buy their stuff in at somewhat different conditions to a start-up business! They also import some stuff, e.g. generators, directly from China.

Very roughly speaking, the going rate is £70 - £100 per week for a £2k tool, more for things that wear out or break or require specialist training (e.g. chain saws).

Remember that you are legally obliged to ensure that your customers are fit and proper people able and fully trained in the use of power tools and equipment, which means in some cases that licenses and certificates of competence must accompany the hire, as well as insurance.

 

[estwig]

Last tool hire shop guy I spoke to lost everything.
He was in a rough part of town, his fire alarm and theft alarms where on the same system, everytime it went off he had to go and reset it. So every night, several times a night he would be called out because someone was putting lighted bits of paper through his letterbox, or seeing fires around the building to blow in, or rattling the doors and windows. Eventually he had enough of not getting any sleep and didn't set the alarm. He got robbed that night and his insurance didn't pay out because he hadn't set the alarm.

Stolen tools are easy to shift, that is just one issue, this is not a business to enter into without years of experience.

 

[Karllacey]

Great good advice from people here and steps in the right direction. Tom, if it came across like that from myself, apologies, generally people are here to help and pass on their experience. and you can actually take information completely out of context

I myself, I do not know the first thing about tool hire but clearly the Byre does.

What I do know is about starting a business and building it and I have seen a lot of people come up with a great idea (or even an existing idea) to build and they go into it without looking at the potential pitfalls, the competition, route to market, the customer base, considerations, legal aspects, insurances and so on...

I love business, I love working with business people and developing ideas to make them reality.

What I do not want to see is people just jumping into business two feet first and then sinking because they have not built a foundation, this is where I am coming from.

 

[The Byre]

I myself, I do not know the first thing about tool hire but clearly the Byre does.

I have only an observer's knowledge - I am not in the tool-hire game, but part of what we do involves a moderate amount of building work and privately, I have renovated many old houses, both here and in Germany and therefore I get to see what and where contractors hire in and what they buy outright.

I obviously know what we buy outright and basically it is anything small, ranging from air and power tools to chainsaws and stand drills, table and mitre saws, cement mixers and breakers and small portable stuff like that. These are things we need all the time and hiring in would be just silly!

Three simple observations leap out at me right off the bat -
one, that the 'big boys' like 'Mammoth Hire are very big and can pool their tools and buy stuff by the container load,
two - that the smaller local operations (such as the list I gave above) are all attached to trade dealers, so they buy in at dealer wholesale prices.
three - there is a price-cutting war in tool hire right now.

The OP needs to carefully study the H&S issues involved and the need for various types of insurance for both himself and for and by the customer.

 

[Gecko001]

I suggest you start hiring out tools yourself from several different hire tool companies as part of your research

One problem that many hire businesses have is that if say they hire out tools to a builder and the builder goes bust, it is not a straight-forward case of going on site and lifting the tools. You might have to wait for months before you get them back again if you ever do.

Often it is cheaper to buy a tool than hire it out for say a week and people are savy to that nowadays as has been said.

On a more positive note the big advantage of hiring a tool over say buying it is that you do not have to have storage space for the tool if you hire it. Thus often people will hire the bigger items such as ladders and lawn scarifiers even though they can be expensive to hire.

 

[The Byre]

P.S. The one thing that stands out for me, is how conservative and old fashioned parts of the UK construction industry are.

At the last new build I commissioned, I was amazed and dumbfounded by the fact that the builder mixed his own outside render and flicked it onto the walls by hand with a trowel. As this was a three-storey building, it took the poor bloke all week to complete!

The guys insulating the roof space of an old house were expected to crawl up there and lay Rockwool rolls.

The painters and decorators put all the plaster up by hand and hand-sanded the walls. Not only that, but they used bags of cheap plaster which they had to mix with a paddle-mixer and the painting was all done by hand with rollers.

I could go on and on with example after example - modern building materials like Ytong and all the ready-mix structured plaster that can be applied by machine just do not seem to get used or are known here.

There are machines that blow insulation granules into crawl spaces, machines that apply plaster, machines that glue Ytong bricks together, machines that spread mortar on a row of bricks, machines that spray the walls with paint - well you get the idea! With the ever-rising cost of labour, having two guys crawling about for an entire day, laying Rockwool (and not being able to get to every part of the roof-space either!) is just no longer justifiable.

If I were the OP, that is the sector of the market I would be looking at, rather than battling with giant tool-hire companies that buy 1,000 table saws from China and are cutting prices right now like mad!

I would start with a few insulation material blowers and go round all the builders and contractors, punting for trade and showing them how one man can insulate a hitherto inaccessible roof-space in under an hour!

 

[estwig]

Machines doing this that and the other! That's not how my Grandad did things and if it was good enough for him, it's good enough for me, don't need all that fancy rubbish!

Besides most builders can barely tie their own shoe laces, let alone be left in charge of anything more complicated than a small drill!

 

[Mr D]

Machines doing this that and the other! That's not how my Grandad did things and if it was good enough for him, it's good enough for me, don't need all that fancy rubbish!

Besides most builders can barely tie their own shoe laces, let alone be left in charge of anything more complicated than a small drill!

LOL - yes must admit I've met a few 'old school' builders. Drill or hand saw being biggest pieces of equipment.
Met a modern one once when getting a quote, had a laser device for measuring, all the other builders quoting had used two guys and a tape measure to measure up.

 

[estwig]

The problem with the building game is anyone working in it, with at least half a brain and a modicum of nounce, is desperate to get out. Doesn't leave much behind!

 

[Gecko001]

P.S. The one thing that stands out for me, is how conservative and old fashioned parts of the UK construction industry are.

I often have wondered about this, but when you look at how the building industry works it is not surprising.

There are lots of highly trained people working in various trades. A builder can show a plasterer a house and say I want it plastered and at the end of a couple of weeks the builder will get a house that is plastered. If the builder instead decides that he can get it done quicker by using a fancy plastering machine or dry lining the walls with plasterboard, he might get it done in less than a couple of weeks, but there will be a lot to organise by the builder in terms of ordering materials and having knowledge or training in the non-traditional methods etc and he is taking a risk regarding quality. Fred the plasterer knows exactly what to do without any supervision. He will tell the builder that he needs so much plaster and off he goes plastering with little or no supervision required from beginning to end. This goes for most other building trades.

Also, unless the builder is also a developer, profits margin in construction are generally low compared with most sectors. So many builders will want certainty with regards to quality and progress. If work has to be done again or some new method proves to be more expensive than the publicity blurb says or because the men using it have not received enough training, then a contractor can see his profit reduced drastically or even at zero at the end of the contract.

 

[Mitch3473]

Just to throw a spanner into the works a builder friend of mine has a van full of 'ex' rental tools.....
and I once bought a 8kva genny off Ebay to run a farmhouse in Spain. I had a bit of explaining to do to Chief Inspector Geraint Jones of the South Wales constabulary.

 

[Paulsou]

Hi Tom, i have been in the hire industry for over 30 years from tool hire to plant hire. Over the years i have seen people come into the industry at take to it like duck to water but also seen people leave just as quick as they started. You get alot of builders merchants having their own in house tool hire i.e Travis Perkins, i am amazed on how many times these companies take on people with no experience in hire and show them the ropes. But in this game you need to get the experience and learn the products inside out to succeed. Every area has a diferent type off customerbase. You will need a good range of equipment to cover all trades, you cant just have a couple ladders and call yourself a hire company. You need items from sds drills to floor sanders, compaction plates to mixers.carpet cleaners to dust extractors.but the ideal things to start is good brand item, ie makita or Hilti drills, belle 4/3 tip mixers, etc list is endless, also build a good relationship with other hire companies and you can rehire from these. please feel free to message me and i would gladly go through some contacts etc.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

P.S. The one thing that stands out for me, is how conservative and old fashioned parts of the UK construction industry are.

At the last new build I commissioned, I was amazed and dumbfounded by the fact that the builder mixed his own outside render and flicked it onto the walls by hand with a trowel. As this was a three-storey building, it took the poor bloke all week to complete!

The guys insulating the roof space of an old house were expected to crawl up there and lay Rockwool rolls.

The painters and decorators put all the plaster up by hand and hand-sanded the walls. Not only that, but they used bags of cheap plaster which they had to mix with a paddle-mixer and the painting was all done by hand with rollers.

I could go on and on with example after example - modern building materials like Ytong and all the ready-mix structured plaster that can be applied by machine just do not seem to get used or are known here.

There are machines that blow insulation granules into crawl spaces, machines that apply plaster, machines that glue Ytong bricks together, machines that spread mortar on a row of bricks, machines that spray the walls with paint - well you get the idea! With the ever-rising cost of labour, having two guys crawling about for an entire day, laying Rockwool (and not being able to get to every part of the roof-space either!) is just no longer justifiable.

If I were the OP, that is the sector of the market I would be looking at, rather than battling with giant tool-hire companies that buy 1,000 table saws from China and are cutting prices right now like mad!

I would start with a few insulation material blowers and go round all the builders and contractors, punting for trade and showing them how one man can insulate a hitherto inaccessible roof-space in under an hour!

Everything you say is true, but is there enough work around for them to adopt this highly efficient work practices when at present they get paid based on a fixed number of days to do the job. if they can do it in half the days they would get the same day rate and in effect only half pay

Now if Barrats or similar employed their own staff to build houses the modern ways would be far more productive and make the company a lot more dosh

There are lots of jobs where people work away from home during the week but house builders just don't want to employ their own staff

 

[The Byre]

Now if Barrats or similar employed their own staff to build houses the modern ways would be far more productive and make the company a lot more dosh

We used one of these machines (not this brand, but similar) and two of us, one builder and my good self, did our old farmhouse in Germany (all the interior walls) in two days. The plaster was structured (i.e. little lumps giving a rough surface) and was ready-mixed and came in 40kg buckets that cost about £25 each.

In this video, you will see that the walls are all made of extra thick Ytong (a brand of autoclaved aerated concrete) so no need for any Kingspan or PU boards and no need for drywall plaster boards. Ytong weighs about one-fifth the weight of conventional breeze-block and is just glued together, so it goes up REALLY quickly and any idiot (almost) can use it - no need to pay brickies!

 

[Mr D]

There are lots of jobs where people work away from home during the week but house builders just don't want to employ their own staff

Would they have enough work for their own staff?

One method used by some companies is to have a portion of their work done by their own staff - say up to 60% for example - then all other work done by external contractors. Only works if can keep work flowing enough to use own staff.

 

[estwig]

We used one of these machines (not this brand, but similar) and two of us, one builder and my good self, did our old farmhouse in Germany (all the interior walls) in two days. The plaster was structured (i.e. little lumps giving a rough surface) and was ready-mixed and came in 40kg buckets that cost about £25 each.

I worked in Berlin after the wall came down, think Auf Wiedersehen pet, I lived it for two years. Brand new apartments and flats where all woodchip on the walls, horrid! The German people don't buy, they rent, so it's all about speed of construction and easy maintenance for the owner/landlord, woodchip hides crappy walls, goes up quick and is easy to maintain, the tenants don't decorate.

We love our homes and want to own them and decorate them to our tastes, hence we want flat walls to paint and paper. The structured plaster just doesn't sell to the British.

 

[The Byre]

Ha! Ha! Yes - I was indeed decorating to rent out!

 

[Gecko001]

Home-ownership in the UK is a big factor with regard to the popularity of traditional building construction in the UK as compared with elsewhere in the world. In the 1950's to 1970's' when home ownership was not so prevalent as it is today, there were various non-traditional building methods used. These methods are sometimes referred to as system built methods and they resulted in many houses being built with inherent defects which only came to light decades after their construction. Examples of such system built houses are Orlit and no-fines concrete houses - there are many others. A very large number of these houses of non-traditional construction have been pulled down or have been effectively blacklisted by many mortgages companies because valuation surveyors will not touch them. A big incentive not to build using non-traditional construction.

 

[Ovidiusss]

why don't you ask some of the big boys? What is your model? B2C like Screwfix, Toolstation or is it B2B like John F Hunt or some other industrial service? Once you know the target you can call them and literally ask them what's the most popular or you can visit the shops and have a chat with the guys at the counter. Personally I would get a few catalogs or brochures from already establish businesses and find what's common between them. I think that you don't have to do all the research and work on what works for them...

 

[OhhEnnEmm]

What type of trade is most common in your area? That's obviously a main factor, though that's obvious anyway..

 

[website-designer]

Serious R&D needed from the sounds of it, how healthy are your competitors in the local area? What is your plan for local marketing?

 

[Paulsou]

The hire industry is a weird game at the moment, it has been a struggle for past few years. You have got the big boys buying out the smaller independents, you have a tool hire in most builders merchants, but saying that you can still make a living from it. You need to do a niche type of hire company to get anywhere, ie generators, powered access, micro diggers. I have been in plant and tool for many years and seen many changes.it was last year i bit the bullet and setup on my own, i now run a successful event and leisure equipment hire, ranging from marquees, inflatables to event toilets and generators. Look into something specialized and approach other hire companies who would cross hire from you.

 

[Gordon - Commercial Finance]

Generators would be a really good place to start I think.