‘Hey Siri, organise my fleet for me’: How generative AI can revolutionise the way rental companies operate

Soeren Brogaard, chief executive of construction telematics firm Trackunit, has a clear memory of the first time he ever used ChatGPT.

“I logged on and put in a simple prompt, you know, who is the Danish prime minister? What’s the situation around X, Y and Z? The rich information and the way I was able to talk to the agent really blew me away. It was a foundational moment for me.”

Now Brogaard is trying to bring the same sort of functionality to rental companies so that in the not-too-distant future fleet managers will be able to interact with a next generation AI assistant to get work done.

In today’s Rental Briefing podcast, recorded at the ARA Show in Las Vegas, Brogaard tells IRN editor Lewis Tyler his vision for how large language models could be used by equipment rental companies.

“I can see a future - and we are actually coming out next year with this agent type approach -where you can take the data intelligence and you can ask a question or get certain responses: How to optimize my fleet; what machines to put in what depot,” he says. “Or it could actually proactively tell you that you need to bring this machine into service or don’t rent this lift out because you need to repair X, Y and Z. It will potentially have the intelligence of a junior fleet manager that is constantly working in the background.”