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Total Equipment & Rental: Growing With Machinery Trader, Hosted Websites & More
To understand why size has advantages, look no further than Total Equipment and Rental (TotalEquipmentAndRental.com). The full-service Bobcat dealer has 15 locations, including dealerships in California, Idaho, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The extensive footprint allows the companies to share assets, ensuring customers’ needs are quickly met.
“It’s not uncommon for someone in Oklahoma to receive a lead to sell a used piece of equipment, and they pull an asset all the way from California or Utah to satisfy the need,” says Gregg Thompson, Total Equipment and Rental senior vice president of sales. Managing assets across multiple locations used to cause headaches. Moving to Sandhills Global products, including the Inventory Management app, has helped ease the pain.
“We really struggled before we got the automation and inventory integration piece dialed in,” says Thompson. In some cases, machines listed online that had sold were still listed months later. “It was very labor intensive to manage the process,” he says. “Sandhills’ inventory integration pieces made it pretty seamless and much less labor-intensive.”
Name-Brand Recognition
Through acquisitions and expansions, the network grew from one location, Bobcat of Oklahoma City, in 2011 to its current 15. Customers range from property owners to large construction companies looking to buy or rent compact equipment from Bobcat, Felling Trailers, Kress, MeanGreen, Morooka, and other brands the dealerships carry.
“The Bobcat brand is like the Kleenex of the skid steer business. It’s the marquee brand,” says Thompson. “We have a diverse, empowered team at all our locations that strives to provide excellent customer service.”
Getting Issues Resolved
Total Equipment and Rental has worked with Sandhills since 2018, when it switched from a previous website provider to having Machinery Trader host all its sites. Sandhills sales rep Shayne Campbell has been instrumental in bringing uniformity to the websites and efficiency enhancements to the company’s operations via Sandhills’ automated inventory management processes and equipment lifecycle sales approach.
“When we sat down with Gregg, he said, ‘I’ve got X, Y, and Z problems,’” says Campbell, who also worked closely with Total Equipment and Rental’s Melissa Zerbe to iron out inventory-related kinks carried over from the previous provider. “For the longest time, inventory was coming into our system listed ‘miscellaneous,’ and it wasn’t driving out to the website,” says Campbell.
Thompson says Campbell immediately took ownership of the issue and went to work. “He’s done a fantastic job of getting us what we needed, being actively involved, and helping us get things listed and moved over to auction.”
‘Tons Of Eyes’
Total Equipment and Rental and its affiliates regularly run a 2-page/centerfold ad in Machinery Trader magazine’s South Central edition to promote new and used retail assets in print and on MachineryTrader.com where they appear as featured listings. Thompson says the “tons of eyes” Machinery Trader attracts in the construction equipment industry was a primary reason for moving to Sandhills.
The companies also use Pre-AuctionTime to advertise assets at retail and wholesale before they automatically move to AuctionTime, Sandhills’ online-only auction platform. They scored significant success in one of AuctionTime.com’s huge end-of-year sales in December, selling over 50 assets totaling over $1.186 million.
Talking Trade-Ins
Looking ahead, Thompson says the plan is to list all assets headed for auction sales first through Pre-AuctionTime, which entails no additional fees to use. “It’s nice to set a date, and if it doesn’t sell, it automatically rolls over to auction without much required.”
The companies also recently got set up with Sandhills’ Trade-In process at all the locations. Available in the Sandhills Cloud, the mobile-friendly app lets infield sales reps share photos, videos, and specs with managers back in the office. Managers then use Sandhills’ FleetEvaluator to obtain asset valuations for the rep to share with the customer. If the customer accepts the offer, the asset moves to inventory. From there, Total Equipment and Rental can immediately market it on Sandhills sales platforms.
Assistance At The Ready
Thompson isn’t the only one who appreciates Sandhills’ products and Campbell’s efforts. Joel Atchley, regional sales manager, says Campbell has helped improve the quality of its online listings by encouraging the usage of more photos and videos. And Steve Jackman, director of rental, appreciates Campbell’s expertise in getting rental assets listed on RentalYard.com.
“To have somebody that knows your website and everything you do helps us,” Jackman says. “He gets right back to you to answer questions right away. Sandhills has benefited me in getting our pieces out to be sold.”
A version of this article first appeared in Sandhills Magazine. You can find current and back issues in the Sandhills Magazine Archive.