KSM Rentals

Twenty-five years ago, Bryce Puckett was a yard technician in a rental company office in Oklahoma City, prepping tools for customers and helping deliver machinery. He moved over to Kirby-Smith Equipment 20 years ago and worked in the rental and industrial equipment division. But he returned permanently to equipment rentals in 2009 when Kirby-Smith acquired Continental Equipment in Dallas and Puckett was named rental manager for the company’s Texas locations. Now, he manages all of Kirby-Smith’s rentals and just completed a three-year term as a regional director of the American Rental Association.

In short, Puckett knows the equipment rental industry. Management of the company’s 3,000-piece rental fleet is in good hands.

How important is rentals to the company? It is recognized as a principal driver of the business, accounting for more than a quarter of the company’s overall annual revenue stream. The types of equipment rented vary across the company’s five-state footprint, Puckett said. Compact equipment is popular among smaller contractors, landscapers, ranch and farm owners and heavier equipment is rented out to the larger contractors.

“We have a big focus on the larger end of equipment as well — heavy earthmoving machinery and aggregate and paving equipment,” Puckett said. “They are a prime focus for us. This includes the wide range of cranes offered by Kirby-Smith, some of which are in the rental fleet. They’re a special breed of machinery. It’s pretty important that we get it right when we rent one of those.”

Approximately 50 employees officially work in rentals at KirbySmith, most as support staff from rental offices in the main dealership building at each location. Rental employees rely upon and support the company’s outside sales team to land rental contracts as an alternative to buying. The end in either case is the same: though a piece of equipment on average is rented for less than 90 days, most longer-term rental contracts are converted to sales.

Thus, the huge rental fleet serves two purposes as a pool of equipment for renters and as way to move used equipment.

“Every machine in our fleet that we purchase, we purchase with an exit in mind,” Puckett said. “The rent-to-own option is one of those tools we utilize to allow customers to get familiar with a piece of equipment, to see if a specific unit will work for them. A majority of them convert over.”

One consequence of the company’s rent-to-own operation is that Kirby-Smith has the largest used Komatsu equipment sales in all of North America, most of which come through the rent-to-own program. In this way, the company can provide Komatsu equipment to a variety of customers at different price points.

Puckett notes that in Europe, 80 percent of heavy equipment is rented and he sees rental activity continuing to grow across the U.S. market as companies opt for more flexibility in their rolling stock. Kirby-Smith is prepared to supply that demand.

“The amount of attention and work that Kirby-Smith puts into making sure our rental fleet is in as good a shape as possible is because it is a core part of our business. It’s a blessing to be a part of that,” Puckett said.  years after its founding, Kirby-Smith Machinery bought out another machinery company and acquired several new accounts in the process. One of them was Komatsu.

(All photos courtesy of KSM.)

“That changed everything,” said Kirby. “We had started with very little financing and there was little money available at the time. Komatsu gave us a major line of credit and it really helped us.”

Whatever Komatsu executives saw in the young company, the business relationship between manufacturer and dealer grew and matured. In 2009, Kirby-Smith purchased the rights to represent Komatsu in northern Texas. The Texas market now represents 70 percent of company sales.

“Moving into the Texas market changed the business forever,” Kirby said.

While the types of machines parked on the Kirby-Smith Machinery lot has varied through the years, almost from the beginning there has been a crane in the mix, beginning with Link-Belt models in 1984.

“Cranes always have been important to our business,” said Kirby, “especially the Manitowoc Company.”

Grove and Manitowoc were separate companies when Kirby-Smith began selling Grove all-terrain cranes in Oklahoma in 1991. In 2002, the dealership also was awarded the Manitowoc franchise for Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and southern Illinois. National Crane products came to Kirby-Smith about the same time. Today, the dealer offers lattice-boom crawler cranes, all-terrain cranes, boom trucks and Broderson industrial cranes. They are a mainstay of the company.

Cranes may be the tallest or heaviest pieces of equipment on a Kirby-Smith lot, but they don’t overshadow other high-profile machines with comparable reputations. Consider the 80-ton, 55-ft.-long, 493-hp Kleemann MR 122 Zi mobile impact crusher, or the 50-ton Wirtgen SP102i slipform paver — both industryleading machines.

Kirby counts the arrival of Wirtgen Group at Kirby-Smith in 2009, which includes the Wirtgen, VÖGELE, HAMM and Kleemann lines, as a pivotal event.

“The Wirtgen acquisition gave an amazing boost to the company,” he said.

The lineup of Kirby-Smith equipment is staggering. Besides the obligatory dozers, dump trucks, excavators, graders, wheel loaders and track loaders, there are sweepers and water trucks, material handlers and compactors, aggregate conveyors and aerial work platforms, generators and trench rollers and on and on.

One of the latest additions to the product offerings are Magni telescoping handlers. Magni equipment ended up at Kirby-Smith after some customers — and some employees — asked for it, according to the company’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Construction Group Joel Cook.

“Magni equipment is manufactured in Italy,” he said. “These are quality machines and highly innovative, featuring a full line of rotating telescopic boom telehandlers that fit well within our rental and sales strategies.”