Not every drain-cleaning project calls for a specialized piece of equipment, but challenging tasks can arise that require renting a piece of equipment for a specific purpose. Managers need to be aware of the frequency of these situations because of the higher costs involved. Here is where the buy-or-rent debate begins.
Steven Spielmann, customer service and technical manager with Goodway Technologies Corp., advises managers to ask basic but important questions to help make the decision.
"'How often am I required to perform drain cleaning?' is the most important," he says. "'What type of cleaning am I going to be doing — light or heavy?' is another consideration."
The more demanding the drain-cleaning applications, the more costly equipment rental will be. If technicians only perform intermittent heavy cleaning, renting is probably more cost effective, he says, while owning the equipment is probably better if they do only routine, light cleaning.
Renee Brown, product manager with RIDGID, offers this rule of thumb on when a rental situation turns into a buying opportunity: "If you are cleaning a drain more than once a month, you should be buying."
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