Rental Roundtable #88: The Biggest Mistake Rental Companies Are Making with AI

Hey folks, for episode number 88 of the rental roundtable we had on my friend Scott Cannon is the CEO of Big Rents. Second time, Gassie came on for episode 50 actually we talked about his Big Rents story and a lot about what they were doing at that time. So a year later we talked about technologies and very much of a conversation more than an interview. We talked about the CTEK AI is over hyped in 2026 and under hyped and gave an interesting answer. We talked about where the future of rental looks like 2036, 10 years from now how rental companies look drastically different, particularly independence and how we think about that. And we talked about the Big Rents strategy. What are they doing on technology? It's not just AI but a lot of APIs, integrations and a lot of stuff they've been working on. So love talking to Scott. Second time is come on. Hope you guys enjoy. Alright everyone, welcome to the rental roundtable episode number 88. We have on Scott Cannon a repeat guest. He's the CEO of Big Rents. Scott, welcome back to the podcast today. Thanks Kyle. Pleasure to be here. So you had a great episode. We saved the big one for episode 50 and if people want to listen to that one we talked a lot about AI this even a year ago where things were talked about why 90% of construction projects go over budget talked about a lot of AI you were doing at big rents of that time, which has even changed a lot even last year or so. Definitely would encourage our guests to go back to listen to that episode today a lot of change though right we're talking more about how AI is being implemented with equipment rental companies. What's what what's working. What's not working. So excited for this conversation. Today so Scott, first of all, tell us what's been changing. We talked a year ago about AI. We're early. It felt like a little early days. Still early in the scheme of things where this is going to go in the next few years, but where are we at with AI, particularly with equipment rental. It just feels like it's a buzzword and in some areas it's it's over performing other areas and performing where are we at right now. Well, I think it's even been less than a year. So I mean, and lots changed and just at very short time time right so. You know, AI is is in the news every single day. Everybody's talking about I think last week, the NASDAQ crashed on software companies that you know, South companies because they AI is making so much advancements. Within rental, we talked last year about how we deploy AI and we were kind of old school AI we use machine learning structured environments to really crunch to data. And I think where I was seeing contractors and rental companies perform what were they're prepared to they have structured data. They know how to use it or they have an application that is specific to their business. And you can see a lot of agenteic AI applications. I know you guys recently launched one. I saw United launched a pretty big deal. I think we're snowflake. And those are specifically tailored to the businesses that that are run by that. So you're you're helping independent rental companies. I think most of us in our private lives use Chad Gbt or Grock or whatever, you know, application you use to varying levels. And you've even seen those applications go from being I think my experience with Chad Gbt last year was absolutely fantastic. I'd say this year it's pretty much garbage. It's diminished even though the speed of the models have improved. It's gotten for a lack of a better word. Dumber. So it's a very mixed, a very mixed progress. We've seen some people be successful. But I think the stat that I saw is like 90% of these projects fail. And even though 70% of our companies are pushing the agenda to spend more in AI. That's kind of the state of the year. Yeah, we'll have a mixed bag. You said 90% of AI initiatives fail. I've seen a similar stat. Why do you think that is? Why are these all this money? Trillion to dollars going into AI driving the stock market all time high. It's the biggest technology shift in our lifetime. In many ways, but it's failing in certain instances. 90% of it. It just is for certain projects. Why is that? I think Black clear deliverables. What are you actually trying to achieve as opposed to it's a buzzword in the sounds fantastic. So if you walk in, if any of us have boarder directors and you walk into a board meeting, one of the questions you're going to be asked in the end, but if you talk to private eggways, which are AI strategy. And right. And it's almost comical. And in a lot of businesses, particularly small rental companies don't have some don't have a need for AI. It's not there yet. It's you haven't taken advantage of the applications that you use on a daily basis that have these robust tools, you know, telematics and good dispatch and integrating these software applications. To really leverage the full power of what you're already paying for. And until you've done that and then you can start to structure some of the data that you have. It's probably too early for you to go do a big AI project. And so that's where you see a lot of fail in is that people just skip all that and they go right to the AI. I think it's going to go solve all these problems that you haven't really solved or fixed yet or even knew that you needed to look at. And I think that's why most projects. So. So they're jumping ahead. So I was watching Olympics this weekend and you know, they figure skating to the quadruple. You know, like, okay, they stacked years to get to that point. You didn't put your skates on the first time and go show up at the Olympics. Right. You had to chip your way there or build your way there. What you're saying is a lot of these data models aren't set up. They're not structured sort of gobbledoop data. And you put an AI model on top of it and you've now done AI. It's not working because you never you didn't do the precursor work to structure the data to determine what success looks like to scope the project. All that. That's the work. The AI is actually the easy part. Right. It's the work of structuring your data and setting up what the deliverables are. And you say most companies aren't doing that. They're just skipping straight to the AI. And because our data is complicated. So if you look at rental. It's not. It's not a simple, easy process. There's Yeah. So many different variables when you're looking at a piece of data that you really need to understand. You know, it's looking at five different rentals. They could be unique. It could be different time horizons. They could have been booked at one rate and cancel later and adjusted. There could be transportation differences, surcharges, tolls, all kinds of things that going to the data that if you're not structured and trying to understand where errors occur. If you're not doing that work, it's it's garbage in garbage out like just having an application absorb. You know, taking your dad and thrown in the chat, GBT and cross your fingers that you hope you get something great out of it. Sure, it probably give you great, you know, 90% of the generalities will be dead on. But the specifics that you need to make business decisions on. I don't know if it's does any value there unless you've done the work. But we have a so like in our case, we have a we have a data scientist on board. And then we have a robust BIT and I'm a great I'm a finance guy. I understand numbers. I can't do the math. Like it's so advanced. Yeah, the structure this. I don't understand it. Some of our engineers who write code, they understand the code being written, but they don't understand logic behind it and what we do it. It you really do have to have that level of intelligence structure and your information unless there's just an application that comes in and knows what to do because it's to comment on a platform. So you sell software and a space. I imagine you structure your data tables and so forth in a consistent basis. So if you know quickly apply some type of AI logic. You're not playing across hundreds of businesses, right. And the data is sort of consistent. That's good. That's fantastic. But if a then panic contractor or rental company today, when it tried to do that on their own, they're going to spend a lot of money. And it's going to be very difficult and it's going to be outside their their real house. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I mean, I think I lost episode you guys been on this AI train, you know, machine learning for years. I don't know, five plus years. We have as well, equipped this been structuring the data and doing all the work. So when it when you do launch an AI tool, it works, right. Because I think if you're a, like I said, any walking any boardroom and you kind of near the CEO, he's the hey, we launched your AI initiative. You get around a plot. So it'd be like, great. You did it. We did check the AI box, right. And with a soon AI marketing press release and we will, we will claim victory. And I think that's a lot of where the last six months have been. And you mentioned open AI. I mean, last night, super bowl. I don't know if you watch, but how many AI commercials it doesn't, right. And I think at least, you know, I think one example of this is, you know, open AI and chat to me, race the head sort of, you know, speed over quality. And you kind of get the crap data coming in and out. And the models aren't that good. And you have an anthropic who went slower and steady and now they position themselves. I think this year, this is my prediction next year's an anthropic will pass open AI and valuation next 12 to 18 months because they did it the right way where open AI was grow all costs and, you know, the, because of that that speed, you don't really look at the quality, right. And you get all this sort of sort of crap here. So I think the companies that are going to win are the ones who've been doing the work quietly and stacking the data and doing very discrete agents are very discrete AI projects and not the ones that just brand themselves AI. That'll give you buzz for six months, 12 months, but I think it would kind of go out in time. Is there an ROI and what you said 90% of the time there's not been right these brothers have failed. Yeah. And there's a lot of team because it adds. So if you talk to customers, they sort of world arise. And, you know, it's one great thing to go develop an AI tool to use for your own business. But what's the application. How does it benefit your customer? Like that question doesn't even get asked. So I was I was in Atlanta last week visiting a very large contractor and I was demo and our new SaaS product. And it's a fantastic demo and it's very complicated software. And then and high level of interest and then to go evangelizing internally, I think the feedback was, teach it to me like I'm in fifth grade. You know, distill it down to very simple things that it does. And I think that's the other thing where they are. It gets way too cute because as technology, technologists, we were very insular. We're doing things that are super cool. We can, we know how to fix problems. But inevitably, you have to go talk to the guy who's actually going to use it and does it add value or not. So it's the guy out in the field who's driving around a flat bed with five pieces of equipment on it. What's it doing for him? Is it improving his life? Is it making it more efficient? Is he doing it cheaper? Is he able to get better service? Does he catch something that otherwise would have fallen through the cracks? Those are value added. If the project doesn't solve a problem or it solves a problem, nobody cares about. Then did anybody care about it? It's kind of like the tree falls down on the forest. Anyway, care. It's kind of one of those things. Yeah. Well, in your experience, where has in the last year big rent seen the most success in some of the AI tools you guys have been rolling out? Where are things really worked? Where are things not work? Tell me about your experience in the last year. So, excuse me. We, I don't know, just to get context of big rents, it's been around for about 12, 13 years now. We've done over a billion dollars of retirement of rental in that time. And because of that, you and we've developed a network of roughly 6,000 rental companies in our network, we've seen just about every inefficiency or potential service issue that could go awry. We haven't seen it all. And developed these really robust tools to be very efficient in the scale of that model. And then use the AI to pick the right suppliers at the right time, do some predictive analysis of who will actually can fulfill things, what prices should be and so forth. But along that journey over the last few years, customers asked us if they could use the tools themselves. So as an aggregator, we make sense for a certain size customer. They're spending a couple million dollars a year in order to work everywhere. That's a good customer for us. And it's good for them. But are you spending tens of millions at dollars? We're probably not the best fit. And at that point, it's, can you take the tools that we have and use them yourself? And there was one big contractor, if you compare with Matt and Stella's story real quick, they spent about 20, 25 million dollars a year in rental equipment. And they had a real bus per chemical process. They just grind, you know, rental companies in when they come in down to the cheapest price. And all the big guys are sitting in there and they dominate it in maybe 10 to 15 others, regional. And they gave us all the data and they said, look, could you do this cheaper? And we looked at and said, like, no, you spend more money by giving it to us. But one of the things we learned because we had the data and we had machine learning is that if you had picked the right supplier when you're supposed to, you would have saved about 20%. So over $4 million. And just using the same rental companies that they used today. And that sort of spurred the moment of like, well, okay, we have a really good tool, use our tool. And you don't have to use us where agnostic. We don't care for you. We know what rental company you use. But what in the process of doing that, it's a better, it's a better product and a better service for the end customer. They're happier. They don't feel that we aren't taking advantage. They're not, it's an intelligent decision. So once you get through the current process, you have three, four hundred people that are ordering them indiscriminately. And if they have their local largest rental company and the world guy down the street brings them donuts every week, you know, the local guy that's in the networks, not getting the love. And he's not getting that opportunity. And for us, we started to do API integrations with two of the top five companies in the space. And then if you look at the software within the space, there's different layers that hit the market, but that sort of independent supplier is our sweet spot. That's about 70% of our space. And there's a couple of products that are in the cloud. We started to integrate there as well. So we're creating a simpler process for rental companies to get business from bigger customers. They otherwise couldn't get because it just kind of outside out of mind. So you guys are using technology to make that, it's effectively getting more business. So there's a use case right there is like using technology to grow revenue, which in my experience with AI, I think the companies and products that are growing the fastest right now are the ones that grow revenue because of two reasons. Everyone wants to grow revenue. I've met one rental company in the last year who did not want to grow. He told me that. He's like, I'm happy with my one location. I cannot rent any more equipment. I'm like, good for you. But the other 99.9% of rental companies want to grow number one. And number two, these tools are not perfect. People listening, if you ever had AI hallucinate and everybody will say it, and I don't know what accuracy it is, 95% 98%. In either case, if I told you your account, it was 98% accurate closing your books, you'd be like, what the hell? So I think what's happening is these eight, but you know, so you may not use an agent to close your books every month, right? Because it needs to be sort of perfect and right. Doing tasks that can help grow revenue, that is less than perfection. And I think that's why people have gravitate towards that. So in particular, like, where do you feel like there's been like real success? If you look at your business last six months using AI, I've used to deploy any agents or can you tell me a little bit more detail what's been working so far? We haven't deployed agents and that's been an intentional, I mean, we've looked at all kinds of technology, we looked at building it ourselves, and then the various systems we have on the services side of the business, we were with a lead and edge telephone provider that talked up their agentic AI and older tools for the last couple of years. They were the lead company there. The ROI never made sense. We couldn't justify it. And then there were pilot programs. They never really actually developed the product they said they were going to do. They do what a lot of software companies do, they go out and sell something before it really exists. And then there we've had frustration. We've in part of our business is outsourced overseas. We offshore some of the lower end functions of our business and the cost benefit there of agentic AI versus the cost there. It doesn't move the needle. It's just, you know, I could go develop an AI tool, but it's going to take me four or five years to recoup my money. If it works exactly the way it's supposed to, or I can go deploy that capital on something that's more useful to me today. And I think that's the decision tree of why AI is, you know, for me, we're not applying it in other parts of our business. We'll be having an agentic AI solution at some point, probably. It would be great to catch missing opportunities, quotes that don't get attended to within a certain amount of time, listening to intent of somebody talking and realizing, are they happy? Are they unhappy? Scoring that, you know, applying that against the revenue profile of the customer? Are they dipping off? What does our historical look like? How do all these trends intermix? And it's very interesting. But we also have, we have offshore people talking to offshore people at our customers. So like eventually it's just bots talking to bots. It gets a little ridiculous. And then like, where's the value? I think AI and cranking data and looking for needle in the haystack, that's the win. I don't think it's replacing your customer service. I mean, there are things you can do already. You guys, your software sells them to customers. Go online, have an online checkout. There's like wins before you jump from people walking in the door at your branch to going to AI to an AI bot that basically automates it. There's so many things in between. Go do like those 50 to 75 things and do them well. And maybe AI catches up in the intern. It's a good point. You know, I think a lot of real companies are here and we're saying, let's go straight to the agents. Well, it's like, well, okay, have you done online renting yet? Have you built a customer portal? Are you texting your customers? Are you, you know, let's get those hoops, let's jump to those hoops before we get to the, you know, and then, and then by the way, there's automations, which a lot of people say are AI, but it's really, it's the same technology five years ago. It's automations. And then you have, and then you kind of get to five other steps. Then you get to the agents, right? And you're saying, maybe let's kind of do the basics first. I'm curious in your experience. You talk to a lot of other companies. As do I are people tired of hearing about AI or are they excited? They say, hey, big rents. What's what else is new? Give me more AI or they like gosh, man. I'm tired of everyone hitting the head with our. Yeah. So AI is not the, the lead topic. Our airway is in a few weeks now. And our, our, our, our drum that we're going to be beat in this year is integration and API. The biggest friction that we cause, our rental companies is over communication. I mean, we just burden them with telephone calls. And we're, we're, we're, we're a very knowledgeable customer. So we know how to procure equipment. We know what we're supposed to, what's supposed to happen when it's supposed to happen. And there's that causes extra rub when you're, when you're calling a rental company 10 times with 10 different people to get the same question because we got to know because our customer wants to know, you know, about 70, 80% of what we do should be 100% automated. Like we're just going to somebody's system, they built the reservation, share information updates on service back and forth. you make model unit all that kind of stuff, all the simple stuff. And that has seemed to be the most complex part of rental to overcome. And I mentioned that we're integrating, I think we'll have integration with the next three weeks with two of the top five. And both just got APIs within the last six months. I mean, this is 2026. Yeah. I'll look at, you know, this is basic, you know, this is basic integration 101 that goes back, you know, 23rd year. So, um, Deploying just basic tools is more value at today than most AI applications from my perspective. Well, I, I think that's interesting thought. And I think for me, I've only been in the space of 2020, which is now, now it's coming back fast five and a half years. I did not seem to me people wanted more technology three, four, five years ago. And I, and it feels to me the last year that has changed. And I think people are, I mean, maybe it's a younger generation coming in who grew up, you know, ordering stuff on their phone. And maybe they started using chat to be T two years ago. But there is way more demand for better technology, way more than the West two years ago. And, and I don't actually think it's mutually exclusive. Like, should you integrate an API? And yes, they want that, you know, they want all of it fully integrated for sure. And they also actually want the agents, which is like, it's interesting. So we launched our agent platform, Quinn. Uh, we announced it last month. And like, it's crazy how much demand we've gone for. And we're still in a beta version. We're not rolling it out publicly. It's like every company. We're very contained right now. And people all the time, like, dude, I'm ready to sign for Quinn. And I'm like, okay, what is Quinn? And they're like, I don't know where it is. Like, you don't even know what it does. You don't know how much it costs. You don't know what it does. And I'm like a little concerned because I'm like, I could sell everybody on Quinn right now. And I get your point. Will it work? I mean, yeah, it does work in certain cases. But I don't think it's right for everybody. And it's interesting. Like, to me, uh, I hate talking about AI. And I've said that for a I probably 400 times already today. So it's like, it just doesn't mean anything anymore. It's like, it's just, it's just, it's just so over hyped. It's just sort of exhausting, you know? And at the same time, I'm still sort of stuck with like, I think it's going to be transformational. And, and as much as I like reserve talking about it with our customer base, people keep asking about it. They, hey, what's the AI? I want to hear about Quinn. And it's, it's, I don't really know to make about it because it feels like we're in this interesting time in rental where do we want AI? Do we want integrations? I think they want all of it. I think people are not, I think the, whatever reason, rental companies have decided like the old legacy way of doing technology in rental needs to go. And I mean, I have a trivia question for you. Know at the average age of a rental software being used today by rental companies is when, when the rental software is founded. When they purchase it. Oh, yeah. No, so now when they purchase it went like when, for all the, for the average rental software in market today, what year were they founded? Oh, okay. So I'm going to say probably six and a half, seven years. So it's actually 1997 was the year. Oh, well, saying is, but you have, the legacy guys are old 1990s. Yes, I'm just, and that's the, there's a ton of, there's a, there's a lot of startups that are, there's, so I kind of put them in several buckets. This is the, you can tell me, this is your space. You can tell me from on or not. You have the, the couple legacy providers, the ones that really serve the big, the large national companies, they've been around since, you know, 95, 96, whatever it is. Yeah. And then there's one that sort of dominate mostly on-prem software that's sort of trying to change into, to the cloud, and they've been around for about 25, 30 years as well. And then one, normally serves cat dealers, and then there's everybody else, the ones in the cloud, they're all like the last five, six years. And there's lots of small ones. They're, they're tiny ones that are sort of starting up all the time. So if you take the average, like a weighted average of all those, because the older ones have the base market share, right? So the average rental company on software today, that software's down in 1997. What's getting at is like, I think 90% of people on rental software is using software that was founded for 2005. And so I think a lot of people are, I wanted to change. I think cloud has moved this change, mobile has moved this change, e-commerce has moved this change. I think agent to me, agents in AI is like the, the straw that, the bruh, canals back to people. All right, I'm now ready to switch off the legacy. And even at point, like, you know, the groups you're working with, they just came out with APIs in 2025, you know, 200 or maybe they don't have them yet, right? And I think so kind of rambling here a little bit, but I just feels like it's a, it's a change. I think, and it's not just about AI, it's about technology. And I think I, and it seems to me that people want better connected technology. Yeah, I think the shift really happened. I mean, I've been here nine years, and I will say that the first four, nobody wanted to talk about technology. They were all right. They're like, yeah, a lot of that is, is if you look at an average rental company, 70, 80% of their traffic are local, walk-in people, people relationship driven. It's not online. It's not, not being driven by, by technology. But COVID, you know, just the whole world shifted in terms of technology and all the advancements that were made in e-commerce and, and AI and so forth all happen all that's four to five years. And if you look at other, how we run our own personal lives, you know, like, they come with a door dash tonight and I just click a few buttons, stuff shows up. And they're all just Amazon and it just shows up. I don't have to go to the store. Now, I'm old school. I like to go see things in person, but I use these applications myself everywhere in my life. I think people just speak, I, I, I custom to it, and if they don't have it. And if you look at if the, the average age of rental software is like 25, 30 years old, and you look at other pieces of business, what does your account in your appeal look like and how far is that advance? If you have a CRM, how cool is that? And you see all these other features in these other tools that you have to use. And then you look at an antiquated system that's sitting on a server, you know, in your back room, that doesn't do, and it doesn't integrate with a dispatch software and you got to get four applications to kind of piece it together and create a data warehouse. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, and I think I think some of your software for you because your software does all these things. I see after this episode comes out, another 20 people are to call me that they want to sign for Quinn. I'm going to say you still don't even know what it does yet. Now, I do think you're right. I think, I think COVID, and then I think Jashit PT, these moments in time in the last five or six years have changed people's perception of stuff, right? And, you know, it's like what Mark Quinn went broke gradually and suddenly, and I think that's what's happened gradually, then suddenly these moments happen. And even the people listen to podcasts, another tribute question for you to pull these tasks. We're going to need the average age of the listeners that run on table podcasts. I'm going to say 45. I think 34. 34. Yeah. So the people who, maybe this is my style, like they listen to Kyle, and a lot of people say Kyle is wrong about stuff. That's fine. But the people who engage with this podcast and sort of where the future is going, it's a younger generation, right? And I think that's the people we see a lot. Second, third generation coming in, we work with a group that she came on the podcast recently, third generation woman owned rental company. And she's coming in, taking over, and she's like, why am I on this legacy software from the 80s? You know, so the first thing she did, she switched to a new rental software. And I do think it's a generational thing that's happening as well as people are just changed, right? And it'll be interesting kind of see where the set out. So I guess one question for you is with all that being said, like, when we think about a Quimit rental, 2026, do you think AI is overhyped or underhyped? Okay. In the short term, it's way overhyped. In the long term, it's definitely underhyped. Like I'm a belief, like I believe. What do you mean by that? Tell me more about what, tell me about that a little bit more. So the tools available are not fundamental changes to the business today from an AI application. An AI application is going to come in and, you know, cut your costs 30% and go get you 300% more sales. Yeah, there are other factors along with the AI that have to be, they have to be true for that to happen. But in the long term, I think there's seismic changes to rental over the next 10 to 15 years. And they're only possible with AI applications that understand the business and get trained to the point where they're, they can they can do it just as well as a person who has a significant amount of demean knowledge and be able to do it the right way every single time because it knows to do it that way. When that comes true, you'll see, you'll see the cost structure of these businesses look different where people put the rental businesses will be different because there'll be a much better understanding of trends and analysis and construction of what's common, what type of equipment, what you really need, what the market really can bear with the market has in terms of inventory in that area, all those sort of things. There's lots of business applications that AI and data and analytics will be able to fundamentally change. And then we're, we're scratching the surface of that in the, the very, very big companies in the space have a really good understanding of that, but even their understanding of it will change radically with better tools. Well, I always think about the ad is that people over estimate estimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. I think that's the same with technology change. People as excited as I I am personally around where this is moving. It's probably, you know, 12 months from now, it's not, it's gonna move, but it's not gonna move as much as 10 years from now, 'cause I think 10 years from now, things look very different. What do you think rental looks like, 20, 36? Let's say this does take on, and it does take time, takes a decade to get there. Like how do these rental companies change how they operate in 10 years from now? - I think the equipment will be positioned differently, and there'll be a less need of redundant locations, or locations that don't make sense to have equipment. The types of equipment where they're positioned geographically will change dramatically. The amount of equipment being produced will be reduced. There are some things that are just oversupplied and over-manufactured. And you see the short term that we saw, you know, COVID sort of ramped, and everybody didn't have enough equipment, and then it over-bought, and then manufacturers are gonna pull back. Be able to predict that with more certainty and understand, hey, these are the trends in this geographic area, the types of construction that's actually likely to occur in the next five, 10 years, and the type of equipment that needs to be there to manage that, and how much saturation of that equipment exists there already, or can be pulled in other places. So much better buying decisions in terms of what equipment to buy, when to buy it, and then when to dispose of it. So that entire life cycle is gonna get much faster decision-making, and if you don't have the tools or the data to compete, you'll get left behind. And that's a 10 year from now. Today, you can still build a business based on relationship, local contractors, and that's, I don't think that's ever goes away, 'cause relationships do matter in the space. Like, these are physical things where people's liars are at stake when they're getting on that piece of equipment. Somebody could get seriously hurt. You wanna have that relationship. But a good chunk of the business is commoditized, and will be commoditized in 10 years. And big data will own it. And if you don't have the tools to basically compete, you'll get left behind. And that is not true with just equipment. You can say that with every large fragmented industry that exists today. - That's interesting. And if we do move towards that world in the next 10 years, where rental becomes a little bit more commoditized, can independent survive, and how do they survive? - Well, independent survive today. I mean, it's been consolidating for 25, 30 years. Like, so the biggest company in space, I saw the podcast that you had, the folks I talked about the-- - Yeah, Joe Condra. - It was very, very interesting. Their whole business, their private equity model, was rolled up, and they rolled up hundreds of companies, and a lot of the big ones. And if you look at the percentage of independence today, is roughly the same as it was 10, 15 years ago. And the number of companies that come into the space, they sell their business, they sit out, they're not compete, they come open up a business again, 'cause they understand it. What that will look like in 10 years from now, I think that it's going to consolidate. There will be consolidation there. And you'll see some multi-generational businesses sell out, because there's not that next generation to take over. That's natural, that should take place. But independence win today based on service. They beat the nationals across the board. And so, in their bread and butter, air backbone, I want a healthy, robust, independent, rental company network to lever. They overserve, they'll do things that the other guys want. And we track all the status. So if you look at like on time percentage, for example, around independence, are roughly 98.9% on time, deliver into a job site, we use the majors as well. They typically are around 96, 97%. Uptime, terms of service, is almost always higher than the pendant. Again, you're up with 98, 97% versus 94, 95%. And so that's how they win, is over service in the account. Getting up at two o'clock in the morning, what something's broken, and going to handle the guy that you know personally, that's relying on you to get that job done and serve them. As opposed to you're to some number, or some customer of one of, you know, a billion customers that they're going to do business with, and you don't spend enough. So the independence win there. Small contractors that they should own that market. Well, I would say there's actually a different view. I would say, which I think the independence may be stronger than ever in 10 years. And partly because I don't think that service aspect goes away. So why do independence lose today? Well, I lose because of scale. You know, the nationals have more scale. They have more capital, they have better technology. They're still going to have those first two things, but I think technology is shading so fast that's becoming more democratized that like, used to have to spend 100 million plus R&D as a national to have this technology. But with AI, it's coming down and costs so dramatically that like, I don't know if the tools that the nationals have are going to be any better than what the independence have. And that will help, you know, the already put in the service that love the play field, right? Because then you have all those data and insights and analytics that they, you are, you added disadvantage. Now you're out of the same playing field. You know, I think in some sense that the independence are better set up than the national. So that technology advantage is going to go away in the next 10 years. Well, but the independence need to do in order to make that true is share information or have to share it across. Yeah, and an analyzed format. Because one of the things the majors do is they buy equipment significantly less expensive. And they know exactly when to buy it and when to dispose of it and to become experts on that. And whether rental service is 100% independence will beat the majors there, not having that data. That's that you can have you have all the tools in the world. But if you don't have the data to basically to understand and to make good decisions, that's a, that's a deep and whole. Yeah, and I think that's sort of what both of our companies are working on. Like I think I really think the next 10 years, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm pretty confident in this that I think the independence will have at least as good as a technology as the nationals. And in some case, it may be better, which has never happened, right? Because like the innovation in our space has been driven by the nationals for a long time, right? They were the first to do e-commerce, the mobile app, the customer portal. And then five, 10 years later, they were sent to Pennes. Got it. They're, they're a second. They're a second. Yeah, yeah. There is another company called Big Rands that tracked it. Yes. But with coming full circle back down to our application on site stack, like, yeah, think about that as a flywheel that is connected to all any end of all the independence, led in contractors to business directly with independence with us out of the way in a, in a repeatable, consistent process with the technology as robust. So like I agree with you, we have the same motivation. We want to have an incredibly strong independent rental network of, and I don't see all the independence do very well. I want them to make more money out, want them to get a bigger share. And we're both building tools that should allow that to happen. And I think if we do our job and others do their job of complimentary software that's out there, then I agree with you. I think there'll be in a much better place in 10 years. But the macro thing still have to be dealt with. And we're going to have to figure out how to share information in a, in a way that doesn't violate any competitive issues to allow people to make the best decisions when they get these tools that understand how to make better decisions. Yeah. And I think obviously the, you know, Ralph Sanolitex was one tool to do that. And they're in a lawsuit right now, right? So there's, you know, there's like a technology aspect of like everyone's shared information. Well, that's not legal in certain cases, right? So you have to do it the right way. So it does seem to me though, like going back to what we're saying maybe 20 minutes ago is that things are changing, you know, like, you know, you were in this nine years ago, me five years ago, even I don't want to talk about technology. It's the last thing I want to talk about. People want to talk about it now, which to me tells me there's something shifting. And maybe it's COVID or maybe it was chatsbyt or maybe it's an age, the next generation coming in, maybe it's all those combined. It seems to me people want more technology and not less, which is different, right? Then when you started nine years ago, I, I clearly agree. And that's why we're pushing API so much with our suppliers. You know, people come up to me and say, you supplier portal stinks. I don't even want to deal with that. I just want to, can I just click it in my system and push it to yours and it's like music to my ears. Yeah. That's the future connecting this, right? And you know, is it API connecting this or is it agent? I think it's probably both, right? I think that's where this all goes. So, um, Scott, we can talk about this probably another hour. We will limit here. We'll wrap up here. Thanks for coming on the question. I usually ask them already asked you, which is best career advice you've ever gotten. Maybe best advice you'd give a rental company thinking about technology in 2026. What advice would you share with them? Link, I would tell them if they don't have a technology platform that's been built in the last five, six years, they're not using the right technology platform. Just because if you have these legacy systems, it's just, if you think about it like a house on a foundation, it's, it's a funky house that's been built, you know, kind of weird because you just plug in stuff on as opposed to a clean view of the way the business should actually be run. And that there's a number of these applications that are relatively, um, I think inexpensive when you look at the value they add to a business, right? And then, um, and then I would be pushing for the Quinn system or any agentic AI application it made by business. So it didn't have to be Quinn. It could be whatever's available out there. Now would be pushing to integrate with all my, my customers, APIs, I would be making trying to make their life simpler, give them tools to pay their bills, all the simple stuff that we take for granted in our lives, let customers do that. Because when you don't, it's friction. It really causes more work, there's more cost, and it's more prone to error, and more prone to service issues. Yeah, with the way I always tell people on your first point, your rental software, the software in general, should not be older than you. And people are like, it's sort of funny, but like, yeah, wait, wait, why is my software older than me? Right? And, you know, if you have to be honest with yourself, the stuff we've talked about, where this is going in the next 10 years, is your technology partner set up for that or not? I think we all need to be honest about that. So, well, Scott's been great to have you on. We'll have to hang out at the A ratio coming up here soon, but I appreciate you coming on. Episode 15 now, 88, two-time guest here. Thanks, Genskot. Thanks, appreciate it. Take care, Scott.