Turn Data Into Direction
Table of Contents
- Enterprise Value Starts With Safety
- Managing Labor and Reservations
- Protecting Cash With Overdue and Receivables Data
- Turning Damage and Inspection Data Into Decisions
- Utilization and Life Cycle: Making Growth Decisions
- Common Threads Across the Panel
- Audience Q&A
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Watch the Webinar
Most rental businesses don’t lack data. What they often lack is a quick way to know which numbers matter enough to act on.
That was the premise behind a recent Point of Rental webinar, “From Data to Decisions: 10 Metrics Every Rental Company Should Know.” Rather than a product demo, the session brought together five rental industry veterans, Anthony Durante, Blake Wiederstein, Earl Sherman, Bradley Hindsman, and Rob Pullen, to share the metrics they relied on most and how those numbers shaped purchasing, staffing, pricing, and growth decisions. AJ Lynch, Point of Rental’s product marketing manager, moderated.
“Every significant decision in a rental company can be improved with better information,” Lynch said in his opening remarks. “The metrics we’ll discuss today aren’t just numbers. They’re tools that help leaders understand what’s happening in the business and determine what actions should come next.”
Here’s a recap of the 10 metrics the panel covered, plus highlights from the audience Q&A.
Enterprise Value Starts With Safety
Anthony Durante, Point of Rental’s industry AI data and logic leader and founder of The Owl, which Point of Rental acquired, opened by connecting the panel back to CEO Wayne Harris’s recent presentation on the company’s shift toward what it calls rental performance: using data not just to report on the business, but to move it forward.
The metric behind that shift, Durante said, is enterprise value. Rental companies commonly track year-over-year growth, he said, but growth alone can mask eroding profit margins built up over years of decaying processes and shrinking margins, both of which lower enterprise value.
One factor Durante flagged, even though it isn’t something rental software tracks directly, is the total recordable incident rate, or TRIR, a measure of workplace injuries requiring medical treatment. “Every single equipment conversation should start with safety first. It is a nonnegotiable,” Durante said, calling TRIR one of the strongest levers on enterprise value after EBITDA.
Durante also pointed to cycle rental revenue per day, a report that tracks how much a given customer spends over time. Left unmeasured, he said, that revenue for the average customer typically decays 15% to 20% a year. Rental companies often miss the trend because new customers coming in the door mask the loss. Tracking and reversing that decay, he said, is a first step toward predicting where revenue is headed rather than just reacting to it.
Managing Labor and Reservations
Blake Wiederstein, a solutions engineer at Point of Rental who spent more than two decades leading event rental operations, including as general manager of Peachtree Tent & Event and founder of Collection Furnishings, focused on two metrics from the event side of the business.
The first was labor as a percentage of revenue. Wiederstein said the metric’s value isn’t in reviewing last month’s labor spend. It’s in using that historical percentage to plan ahead. If a company typically runs labor at 18% to 20% of revenue and has $100,000 in bookings coming up, he said, it can allocate roughly $18,000 to $20,000 to staffing in advance rather than reacting once a crew is overwhelmed, or worse, overstaffed. He recommended breaking the metric down by department: hourly staff who handle equipment directly versus sales and administrative costs, depending on what a business wants to learn.
The second was a reservation value versus revenue trends report, available in Elite and Expert, which compares booked reservation value to actual revenue over time to show how much business comes in early versus at the last minute. For event businesses in particular, Wiederstein said that visibility can support decisions like setting minimum order sizes, establishing cutoff dates, or incentivizing early bookings to cut down on last-minute chaos.
Protecting Cash With Overdue and Receivables Data
Earl Sherman, who has spent more than four decades supporting Point of Rental customers, focused on two reports built to protect cash flow: the overdue items report and accounts receivable.
Sherman recalled watching overdue rentals closely when he worked in rental operations, since cash customers weren’t always reliable about returning equipment on time. Without real-time tools, he said, that often meant running the report multiple times a day and making calls that same night. Point of Rental’s Data Glance now shows overdue items as they happen, letting staff call customers and log notes in real time instead of after the fact.
The same held for accounts receivable. “When I started, our strategic goal was to get money into the bank account to make payroll,” Sherman said. Where he once had to run a static aging report to see who owed money and for how long, he said he’d now rely on a live accounts receivable dashboard instead. His advice to companies still working from a static report: take a look at the overdue list. It can be “pretty scary,” he said, based on what he’s seen while training customers.
Turning Damage and Inspection Data Into Decisions
Bradley Hindsman, a customer success manager team lead at Record360, shared a statistic to frame the scale of the problem: So far in 2026, Record360’s customer base has logged 332,362 inspections marked with new damage, meaning damage that wasn’t already on the unit when it went out. Each of those, he said, represents at least a handful of decisions, starting with whether it’s clear the damage wasn’t preexisting.
Hindsman said many rental companies lack a consistent process for spotting recurring damage trends, such as whether a specific customer damages certain equipment more than others, and for using that pattern to adjust service schedules or rates. He connected the issue directly to Durante’s safety point: Inconsistent inspections, whether at checkout, at return, or as part of daily vehicle or service compliance, create both safety risk and disputes over damage. Establishing a real safety culture, he argued, tends to also build a culture of excellence.
Utilization and Life Cycle: Making Growth Decisions
Rob Pullen, an account manager with more than 19 years in the U.K. equipment hire industry, closed the metrics portion of the panel with two ways to judge whether a piece of equipment is actually making money, not just staying busy.
The first was combining time utilization with what Pullen called financial utilization: the rate an asset actually earns compared with what it could earn at its full list rate. That’s a different metric from “dollar utilization,” a fleet-value measure Durante brought up later in the Q&A, though the two get discussed in the same breath. Pullen’s rule of thumb is the 120 rule: Add an asset’s time utilization percentage to its financial (rate-achievement) utilization percentage, and a combined score of 120 or higher signals a healthy asset.
A generator that’s rented only 30% of the time but commands full rate, giving it 90% financial utilization, still hits 120 and is quietly profitable. A small tool rented 80% of the time but heavily discounted, at only 20% financial utilization, totals just 100 and fails the test despite looking busy. “We don’t chase being busy,” Pullen said. “Chase profit.”
The second was tracking maintenance cost against a machine’s age to find its life cycle sweet spot, the window of peak profitability before repair costs erode margin. Comparing a 2-year-old digger, which he said might cost around £200 a year to maintain and spend two days in the shop, to a 10-year-old digger racking up £3,500 in parts and labor and three weeks of lost rental time, Pullen argued that no piece of equipment is ever truly free to keep, even once it’s paid off. His rule of thumb: Once lifetime maintenance reaches 40% to 50% of a machine’s purchase price, it’s time to either repair it, if the fix is quick and the asset is still relatively young, or sell it while it still retains around 25% of its value rather than run it until it’s worth only scrap.
Common Threads Across the Panel
Lynch closed the metrics discussion by pulling out five themes that ran through all five panelists’ answers:
- Action over information: Knowing what happened matters less than turning that information into a clear, measurable next step.
- Trends over snapshots: A single data point shows what happened. Watching the trend, and accounting for seasonality, shows where it’s headed.
- Metrics tailored to the business: What matters for a heavy equipment fleet differs from what matters for weekend-warrior rentals or event businesses, and KPIs should reflect that.
- Visibility fuels decisions: Lynch compared reviewing uncomfortable data to looking under a rock or under the house: unpleasant, but necessary to find what’s actually going on.
- Simplicity and consistency: Start with a manageable set of metrics reviewed consistently rather than trying to track everything at once.
Lynch tied the discussion back to Harris’ recent rebrand announcement. Point of Rental isn’t stepping away from rental management software, he said, but layering rental performance on top of it. “Your data gives you information. Information gives you insight. Insight can lead to decisions, and the decisions can lead to results,” Lynch said, noting that performance lives in those last two steps.
Audience Q&A
The panel closed with audience questions. A recap:
What is dollar utilization, and how do you calculate it? An attendee originally asked about financial utilization. Pullen said he’d rather answer that one in writing than try to explain the formula live. Durante then volunteered a related but separate metric: dollar utilization, the percentage of total fleet value out on rent at a given time. His example: A $1 million fleet with $500,000 of assets out is at 50% dollar utilization. He shared rough industry benchmarks for that metric, too: Around 24% is typically the bare minimum, under 30% is considered poor, 35% to 40% is average, and anything over 40% is a strong result.
Is there a reference for optimal life cycle by equipment category? Durante offered rules of thumb from his own operating experience: 10,000 to 20,000 hours for a generator set, 2,000 to 3,000 hours for a mini excavator, 3,000 to 4,000 hours for an air compressor, and 500 hours for a scissor lift, while acknowledging the right number varies by company and market.
How do you determine normal wear and tear versus a customer’s responsibility? Hindsman said many Record360 customers build their own standards from historical data, such as how long a unit is typically out before a cleaning fee no longer applies, or how many miles or hours of use are normal for tires or tracks. He recommended making those standards clear to customers up front. “Clarity is always key,” he said.
Does Record360 use salvage valuation in its calculations? Not directly, Hindsman said, but many customers build their own offload indicators in Record360 based on depreciation, time, mileage, or hours to flag when equipment should come out of the fleet rather than go back out for rent.
Are trends more important than individual metric numbers? Sherman said trends are worth watching but should be taken with a grain of salt, since some run their course and fade. Durante disagreed, calling trends essential: Understanding the past and present lets a business start predicting what comes next, and predictability is where the real value is.
How has easier access to dashboards and analytics changed how rental businesses use data compared with five or 10 years ago? For Pullen, the biggest shift is live data. Where a report once took a week to build and was outdated the moment it went out, live dashboards, including AI-powered ones, now answer a question the moment it’s asked.
What metric matters most during a slow season? Wiederstein pointed to protecting cash flow first: auditing operational costs, clearing slow-moving inventory, and, based on his own experience through the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on retaining existing customers rather than chasing new ones, which he said can cost roughly four times as much.
Can you share a time when data surprised you? Durante described a moment from an ARA Women in Rental breakfast, where a speaker sorted the room into four personality types and the audience was struck by how well the framework fit. He said he’s found the same pattern holds inside rental data: Sales reps, fleet, and revenue segments all tend to sort into a handful of clear, actionable buckets once you look closely, rather than the chaos they first appear to be.
What percentage of maintenance labor cost on a low-hour machine signals it should come out of the fleet? Durante said to first check whether the data is clean, since damage billed into maintenance costs can skew the picture, and to consider whether a manufacturer batch issue or environmental factors, like machines used on the water or coastlines, are driving the cost. Hindsman added that tightening rental contracts around equipment use and environment can help prevent the issue in the first place.
One additional comment from an attendee drew agreement from the panel: It’s worth periodically reviewing which customers have quietly stopped doing business with you, and why, rather than focusing only on new business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What metrics did the panel cover?
The panel discussed 10 metrics: enterprise value and total recordable incident rate, cycle rental revenue per day, labor as a percentage of revenue, reservation value versus revenue trends, overdue items, accounts receivable, damage trends, inspection compliance, combined time and financial utilization, and asset life cycle versus maintenance cost.
What is the 120 rule?
It’s a rule of thumb from panelist Rob Pullen for judging whether an asset is truly profitable: Add an asset’s time utilization percentage to its financial utilization percentage, meaning the rate it achieves against its full list rate. A combined score of 120 or higher indicates a healthy, profitable asset, even if it doesn’t look busy.
What are typical dollar utilization benchmarks?
Panelist Anthony Durante shared rough industry benchmarks for dollar utilization, the percentage of total fleet value out on rent at a given time (a different metric from the rate-achievement-based financial utilization behind Rob Pullen’s 120 rule): Around 24% is typically the bare minimum, under 30% is considered poor, 35% to 40% is average, and anything above 40% is a strong result.
Watch the Webinar
Watch the full panel discussion, including the audience Q&A:
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