6+ Efficiency Tips & Tricks from a Rental Expert
Everyone in the rental industry could use a little more time.
Few of them take as many opportunities to make more of it as Brad Kniep from American Rental. The company’s headquarters in Morton, Ill. is full of thoughtful efficiencies; he shared several of them with us.
Warehouse Efficiency
Training new team members to understand your inventory, how your warehouse is organized, and what your processes are can take a lot of time.
But if you’ve got a well-built, consistent process, it’s almost impossible to mix up items in orders.
At American Rental, dirty items have a designated drop zone.
From there, they’ll go to the wash bay to get washed and dried. Every item has its own designated bin location, which is entered within their Elite software, so it’s in the same location, every time.
Brad and his team have taken an extra step to ensure inventory never gets mixed up, customizing pallets to fit only the item designated for it.
Streamlined Item Prep
Discovering that the day’s deliveries aren’t going to fit on the assigned truck as you’re loading the truck? The worst.
American Rental has marked out rectangles in their loading area corresponding to the size of each truck they have. By staging gear in advance, they’re able to see what adjustments need to be made in their dispatching and scheduling and adjust a day or two BEFORE deliveries need to go out.
It speeds up the loading and delivery process while eliminating last-minute opportunities for error.
Quick Inventory Counts
How’re your times-table skills?
By labeling the ground and maintaining consistent stack numbers, it’s easy to inventory chair stock at American Rental.
Just head to the container, count the stacks, and you’ve got a quick count. Imagine counting a container full of chairs one-by-one!
If you’re wondering how many of those first chairs there were…to calculate 76 x 7 in your head, multiply 70 x 7 (7×7, plus add a 0 at the end: 490), add 7×6 (42), and they have 532 available.
Controlling Fuel Costs
Having onsite fuel allows for much more direct control of your fleet’s fuel costs.
American Rental’s trucks and equipment are tagged with QR codes that activate the correct type of fuel in the company Fill-Rite app and track fuel usage by employee.
This helps track fuel costs by business unit and prevents not only fuel theft, but wasted fuel by being able to manage everything on-site.
Core Values and Company Culture
If your team isn’t bought in on your vision, systems, and processes, they won’t have much of an impact.
In addition to prominently displayed core values, Brad and the American Rental team highlight easy-to-enforce “Enemies of Unity”, which make it easy to identify what NOT to do. This helps get everyone on the same page and turn around anything that might cause a negative working environment as quickly as possible.
Every process might feel like it only shaves off minutes or even seconds of time, but with repetition and as you add more employees, it works out to hours and days’ worth of extra time on the year.
These aren’t all of Brad’s efficiency tips and tricks. He’s also implemented drive-thru rentals, added CRM tools to help his sales staff take care of more customers, and more.
Do you have a process you’re proud of? Share it with the world! Send your time-saving efficiency tips to [email protected].