Treadline adds 4,000 machines to its rental fleet and bets on telematics-first contracts
The rental group will bill some customers by engine hours and utilisation data rather than by the day, starting with aerial and earthmoving equipment.
Treadline Rentals said this week it will add roughly 4,000 machines to its North American fleet over the next nine months, with about a third of the investment going to aerial work platforms and the rest split between compact earthmoving and generators.
The bigger news is how some of that equipment will be billed. Treadline plans to offer contracts priced on actual engine hours and utilisation reported by each machine's telematics unit, rather than the traditional daily, weekly, or monthly rate.
Paying for what you use
Contractors have long complained about paying for machines that sit idle on site for days between tasks. Usage-based pricing shifts some of that risk to the rental company, which Treadline says it can manage by moving underused machines between nearby sites more aggressively.
“The data has been sitting in the machines for ten years. We're finally letting customers pay based on it.”
Analysts expect competitors to follow if early adopters stick with the model, though some warn that usage billing makes monthly costs harder for contractors to predict.
- Rental
- Telematics
- Pricing
