International rental company Ramirent has agreed a deal with Toyota to add industrial forklifts to its short terms rental product range.

The agreement mainly covers the renting of counterbalance forklifts but also includes warehouse units. It includes the training of Ramirent personnel in forklift rental, with Toyota also retaining responsibility for the scheduled maintenance of the forklifts.

A Toyota forklift

Pasi Nieminen managing director of Toyota Material Handling Finland said: “This cooperation agreement constitutes a significant milestone for both Toyota and Ramirent. Both parties are confident that there is significant growth potential in Finland as regards short-term rental of forklifts.”

Ramirent group fleet director Mikael Kämpe added: “Ramirent has rented out forklifts before, but only occasionally and without active marketing. With this new agreement in place, Ramirent Finland will include forklifts officially in its rental offering and start actively marketing the forklift rental business to its various customer sectors. If this cooperation proves to be successful in Finland, we will expand the cooperation to all Nordic countries in the autumn of 2012 and to other Ramirent countries in 2013.”

Vertikal Comment

Counterbalance forklift rental is a different business to the more construction orientated rental that Rami is involved in. The bulk of the business is also long term and contract rental, which is not what Ramirent is going after. Many companies in countries like the Netherlands, Belgium and to a lesser degree France, have managed to combine the different businesses very successfully and it can be argued that it provides some market diversification from construction.

It has also long been argued that the hard to reach industrial type customers that are the main users of counterbalance forklifts, are also prime candidates for aerial lift and other equipment rental.

With Toyota’s support this could be an excellent move for Rami, it is taking a wise approach though by trialling it in its home market first.
It will be interesting to observe how it goes.