Beyond the Bucket: How Rental Companies Can Increase ROI with Application-Focused Skid Steer Attachments

Walk through just about any rental yard and you'll find skid steers and compact track loaders earning their keep. There's a reason for that. They're relatively easy to transport, customers know how to use them and, with the right attachment, they can handle a surprising range of work. 

That last part is where rental companies may be leaving money on the table. 

A bucket makes a loader useful. A well-planned attachment inventory can make that same machine useful to several different types of customers. 

Consider the person who comes in looking for a skid steer to clean up an overgrown property. The real need isn't the machine. It's getting the property cleared. Depending on the conditions, that could mean pairing the loader with a brush cutter, mulcher or grapple. 

The same thinking applies elsewhere. A contractor removing concrete may need a hydraulic breaker. Someone installing several hundred feet of fence needs an auger. A customer cleaning up a construction site may be better served with a grapple or broom. 

That's a different conversation at the rental counter. 

Instead of asking, "What machine do you need?" start with, "What are you trying to get done?" 

The answer can lead to an additional attachment rental while helping the customer leave with equipment that's better suited to the work. 

There's also a fleet-utilization argument. 

Adding another attachment doesn't mean adding another engine, cab or complete power unit to maintain. One compatible skid steer or compact track loader can move material on one rental and cut vegetation on the next. Change attachments again and it can drill holes, break concrete, handle logs or sweep a parking lot. 

That flexibility can open the same machine to customers working in construction, landscaping, property maintenance, utilities, demolition and land clearing. 

The key is choosing attachments around actual applications rather than simply filling rack space. 

Blue Diamond Attachments offers Brush Cutters, Mulchers, Hydraulic Breakers, Augers, Grapples, Brooms and other attachment options that allow rental operations to build inventory around the work their customers encounter every day. 

Rental counter teams can play an important role, too. Ask about material. Ask about ground conditions. Ask what needs to be cut, broken, moved or cleared. A few good questions can uncover an attachment opportunity the customer didn't know existed. 

Buckets will always have a place in the rental yard. 

But if the goal is getting more earning potential out of the machines already there, it pays to look at what's hanging on the front of them. 

Sometimes increasing fleet ROI doesn't require another machine. 

It just requires giving that machine another job.