With Gold Coast Equipment’s recent purchase of 75 machines, contractors in central and parts of northern Florida have a place to rent compact Komatsu machines.

“We realized we needed to get out of the heavy dirt equipment business and go to the compact type of dirt equipment because that is what our customer base needed,” said Matt Villella, president and owner of Gold Coast Equipment.

More than 80 percent of its business is aerial lifts and forklifts and these customers primarily use mini-excavators, compact track loaders and loader backhoes.

“By changing to smaller equipment, we also eliminate a lot of service problems and logistical difficulties we had with the larger equipment,” Villella said.

He went with Komatsu machines for their brand name appeal to potential renters and because “we needed reliable equipment and Komatsu is known for its reliability.”

Also, Gold Coast is the only company that rents Komatsu compact machines in its territory; the Komatsu dealer, Linder Equipment, does not have a competing rental division.

“Linder was able to meet a demanding delivery schedule,” Villella said. “They delivered all 75 machines within a week.”

So far, Villella has been satisfied with the machines’ performance.

“Linder and Komatsu were able to get our people trained both on how to operate and how to service the equipment and they have dealt with any issues we had immediately,” he said.

The deal between Gold Coast and Linder has created a new working relationship, said Jeff Cox, president of Linder.

“Gold Coast Equipment is very helpful in presenting our equipment to potential customers. Since we don’t have a rental fleet of compact equipment, we send all rental requests to them,” Cox said. “It is a three-way partnership with Gold Coast, Linder and Komatsu serving the compact equipment rental customer.”

The relationship is reciprocal.

Linder’s Florida Sales Manager Alan Nucci said, “we send them rental business and they send us sales leads since we are in different ends of the business.”

Gold Coast was founded in Ocala, Fla., in 2002 to serve the aerial lift and forklift markets. In 2003, it expanded into earth moving equipment and, in 2006, added a branch in Plant City, Fla.

It has more than 650 pieces of equipment in its rental fleet, as well as six field service trucks and six transports to move equipment.

In addition to Villella, the company is run by Patrick Killian, operation manager; Tom Furcolow, service manager; Tim Thomas, vice president; Caroline Prescott, Plant City branch manager; and eight sales representatives.

For more information, visit www.gcequipment.com. CEG

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