S1E15: Buying vs Renting Construction Equipment
Episode Links
“A lot of the lessons I learned on equipment was just from making mistakes.”
Randy Blount entered the construction industry at age 17 working for his family contracting business. He was thrust into a leadership role at age 21 when a cancer diagnosis sidelined his father from the company.
Taking lessons from a number of early mistakes, Randy maintained the business until his father’s passing, at which time he purchased the company and took over management of daily operations. Over the next ten years, Randy worked with his team to implement key operational systems which helped successfully grow Blount Contracting from $3.5 million to $40 million in annual revenue.
In 2020, he sold the business and remained closely involved as a shareholder, helping to grow annual revenue to $100 million while maintaining profitability well above industry averages over the next two years. Randy now serves as Chief Financial and Strategy Officer of BuildWitt, where he applies his finance education and career-long construction experience to help drive the organization towards its mission of making the dirt world a better place.
In this episode, we talk about all of this and more including how to determine whether you should buy or rent equipment, common mistakes contractors make in buying equipment and how to avoid them, and why it’s important to understand utilization and rental rates.
Key moments:
Going from a $4 million construction company to a $100 million construction company (3:00)
How to best utilize your construction equipment (15:00)
Why contractors should never own 100% of their equipment (25:00)
Why all projects and bids should be estimated with rental rates (35:00)
How to think about equipment as assets and liabilities (38:00)
Why Randy moved from being in the dirt to BuildWitt (43:00)
About DOZR
Building Builders is created and published by DOZR, a rental marketplace for construction equipment. With DOZR, you can find hundreds of heavy equipment rental companies near you in just one click. Join thousands of contractors looking for rental equipment across North America today.
About Randy
Website: BuildWitt
LinkedIn: Randy Blount
Building Builders Links
Instagram: @dozr.rentals
Facebook: @dozr.rentals
Twitter: @DOZRHUB
