Andy Wright column: ‘bendy men don’t break’

‘Bendy men and women don’t break’. I love this phrase; it’s one of my favourites!

For me, it encapsulates one of the main components of what makes us successful, be that as an individual or as an organisation. It refers to flexibility, of course, and successful people and businesses are able to adapt, demonstrate resilience and go with change, rather than fight it.

It’s also a good metaphor for the rental industry over the last twenty years, which has had to deal with unprecedented change on a never seen before scale. We have had to navigate a global financial crisis, survive through a once in a lifetime global pandemic, manage supply chain disruption, skills shortages, electrification, digitisation and the onset of AI as well as ever-changing customer expectations. It’s quite a list and the industry has come through it remarkably well, considering the rate of change.

Andy Wright.

It’s an old saying, but it has never been more relevant to the rental industry.

In rental, as in life generally, flexibility isn’t weakness; it’s the cornerstone of what creates resilience. It’s the creativity to make a deal work when it seems that you have reached an impasse; it’s the ability to meet the demands of business life today whilst still fulfilling all your promises to your customer and to your family; it’s seeing opportunity when others see barriers and hurdles that create a roadblock.

It’s always being able to keep your focus on the big picture and not getting bogged down in the weeds or distracted instead of dealing with the critical aspects of what running a rental business is about.

Flexibility is central to everything

In fact, flexibility should be central to everything that we do in serving our customers and running a successful rental company. It should touch everything that we do and if it does it’s a powerful weapon in our armoury as we seek to win in this highly competitive landscape.

Here’s a few areas that it really can make a difference:

Fleet flexibility: the ability to get in and out of different types of fleet profitably, investing in the equipment customers will need today and tomorrow, not running outdated technology and equipment which can’t solve customer problems. It’s also about being able to utilise the products within our fleet to create application-based solutions that add real value to customers operations.

Commercial flexibility: being able to offer finance options to customers such as offering rental or lease terms; providing a managed service or outcome-based solutions, such as fuel/energy management, remote monitoring, full installation solution, operators for large construction plant, rather than one rigid model. All of these help to make us easy to do business with.

Technology flexibility: this is an increasingly important area for businesses to have expertise. Technology supports both internal efficiency and performance gains and external customer-driven metrics such as utilisation of on-rent assets and carbon statistics, to name a couple. To achieve this, we need to embrace telematics, AI, automation and digital customer journeys, all of which requires a flexible mindset to adapt to new technology.

People flexibility: having a team of people who embrace change and run towards challenges is fundamental to being successful in today’s environment. It’s about developing leaders who empower teams and continuously learn rather than relying on “the way we’ve always done it.” That kind of rigid thinking ultimately leads to failure and disappointment.

Financial flexibility: solid financial management and well thought through capital allocation is a crucial competitive advantage over financially weaker players. Maintaining balance sheet strength creates the ability to invest when competitors are retrenching and weak, delivering growth and market share gains.

All of this has helped me to come to the conclusion that the strongest rental businesses aren’t necessarily the biggest—they’re the most adaptable. Strength comes from flexibility, not from rigidity.

Trees that refuse to bend in a storm are often the first to snap. Those that move with the wind are still standing when the storm has passed.

The greatest capacity to adapt

The rental industry is no different. The future won’t necessarily belong to the companies with the largest fleets. It will belong to those with the greatest capacity to adapt and through that adaptation, provide bespoke, value-added solutions to their customers.

Historically, the businesses that have continued to outperform have often shared one common characteristic. They adapt. They flex. They evolve before circumstances force them to.

The irony in all of this, of course, is that rental itself is built on flexibility. We encourage our customers to avoid owning assets because their needs change. Yet sometimes, as an industry, we struggle to apply that same philosophy to ourselves. The companies that prosper over the next decade will be those that rent equipment with flexibility—and run their businesses with the same mindset. That is where competitive advantage will increasingly be found.

Because in business, as in life, bendy men and women don’t break.