When rental trucks, trailers and equipment come back in unfit conditions, it disrupts your whole operation.

You can’t rent it right back out in that condition. You’ve got to take it out of the rotation, pay someone to clean it, and then put it back in the lineup.

Often, the down time costs your business even more than the cleaning crew.

Some companies have increased their rental fees to cover these extra costs. But that makes it hard to stay competitive.

There is a better way!

Let’s stop the unfit behavior at the root cause–the drivers. Let’s not penalize all the customers with higher prices but instead charge only the culprits that are leaving excessive trash, garbage and other unfit conditions in the rentals.

To do that, you’ll need irrefutable proof that the rental was clean when it was picked up and unacceptably unfit when it came back.

That’s where Photector comes in.

In order to charge these customers for the cleaning and downtime successfully, you’ll need good records–photos of the clean condition when the driver took it out and photos of the unfit conditions when the driver brought it back.

Photector is a quick and easy way for rental agents to document the condition with up to 20 photographs when the rental leaves, complete with GPS location, time and date stamps, all saved in the Blockchain where no one can alter them. When the rental comes back in, agents take more photos of the condition.

Photo evidence removes all doubt about who is responsible. The “before and after” photos are key to stopping any “he said, she said” arguments.

With Photector in place, you can institute a new billing policy with cleaning fees and have the factual proof to share with customers about their drivers’ behavior to make the fees stick. Even a $100 fee will get their attention.

If a driver knows that “eyes are watching,” you are going to charge $100 to the company, and their boss is going to see the photos, then the driver will be more likely not to leave behind any unwanted conditions.

Schedule an appointment today to see how Photector can stop these unfit conditions in its tracks.

Let’s face it. Many folks who rent trucks drive cars. They aren’t used to the big trucks that take more room to maneuver, turn and park.

That’s why equipment damage is such a big line item expense in our industry.

More awareness could be built into the rental process, encouraging renters to take the transaction more seriously. Reminding them that trucks aren’t tanks and that they can be damaged just as easily as cars.

Photector’s photo documentation system acts as a “pattern interrupt” to a typical rental experience. A pattern interrupt is a technique that changes a person’s thought, behavior or situation.

With Photector, the counter agent quickly snaps photos of the rental driver, their ID, and all sides of the truck, trailer or equipment while the customer watches. The agent explains that more photos will be taken again at the end of the rental and they will be responsible for any new damage.

By increasing awareness and setting these expectations up front, customers will drive away with safety at the forefront of their mind. It’s a win-win for everyone.

See how easy Photector’s photo documentation process is by scheduling an appointment.

Cash customers can be a curse or a blessing when you consider that a customer gives you a few hundred dollars and drives off in a brand new, 5-figure box truck.  Here’s how one disaster played out at a well known national rental company.

A woman came in to rent a 16-foot box truck for what she said was a one-day, in-town move. She paid her $200 deposit and $40 rental fee in cash. Should that have raised a red flag? Probably, but it gets worse.

They gave her one of the brand new trucks, because the trucks stay in local inventory when it’s an in-town move.  The next day, their customer didn’t show up at her scheduled return time. She didn’t show up late–she never showed up at all!

They began calling the first phone number she gave them with no answer. Next, they would’ve charged her credit card… but she had paid in cash!  They then called her second phone number. It turned out to be the business phone number of their other rental office down the street.

Now, here’s the best part: The rental rep forgot to scan her driver’s license. There was no G.P.S. installed on the truck. They had no idea where their brand new truck was, and all evidence pointed to a stolen vehicle they’d never see again.

This was a perfect storm of incompetence, oversight and deception, and they were at fault for 2 out of 3!

Luckily, a week later, the truck showed up. Their customer had driven it across state lines and dropped it off at one of their other rental offices in California. Turns out, it was cheaper to steal it for a week than to pay for a one-way move to California.

She had given the rental company cash, along with a fake name, 2 fake phone numbers, and no I.D. or credit card. They didn’t have a clue who she was, so they couldn’t find her to even prosecute her.

The outcome would have been much different if Photector had been part of the rental process. During check-out, they could have taken photos of the customer, her ID and credit card, and photos of the condition of the truck. The evidence they collected would have been date, time and GPS location stamped and stored in the Blockchain–evidence that would hold up in court. It would also be evidence available to all of the rental companies locations instantly across the country, as well, so she couldn’t try this again on anyone else in the near future.

Of course, using Photector may have been a deterrent and this customer may have decided stealing wasn’t worth the risk.

See what Photector can do for your rental company by scheduling an appointment with us today.

A colleague worked in the truck leasing business for a well known company that had a big lease contract with a freight company. He told me lots of stories about rental trucks being returned with damages.

Once he was in his office when he heard one of the rental reps on the front counter yelling, so he went to see what was going on. The customer’s driver had walked in, flipped the keys at the rental rep, and walked out. Didn’t say a word.

As they chased the driver to the parking lot they discovered the truck’s entire passenger side was missing! The driver must have sideswiped something. The side skirts and the front were damaged. The molding and plastics were gone from the passenger side. The door was a mess and the mirror was missing.

It was more than $15,000 of damage.

My colleague marched back inside to send a strongly worded email to the company, attaching a damage claim. But when he started searching for the inspection document, he went cold. Come to find out, nobody ever filled one out on this rental.

No one completed a walk around at time of rental. Or if they did, the paperwork didn’t make it to the file cabinet.

He went ahead and sent the damage claim email with pictures of the damage anyway, but he knew what would happen…and it did.

Almost immediately, the freight company requested the original inspection sheet. He told him that he couldn’t find it.

“Well, then it sounds like you guys have a problem, don’t you?” the freight company contact said. And that was the last of the damage claim.

Unfortunately, he was right, and they had to eat the entire cost of repairs.

Sadly, this was not a rare occurrence. They had situations like this several days a month, all year long.

When I talk to others in the industry, they tell me the same things happened at their companies all the time, too. Blame it on $10/hour clerks or paper records instead of digital documentation or just being too busy to be thorough. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, that’s a lot of profit going out the window in an industry with already low margins.

Today this would never happen because there’s Photector. You are able to document the condition, location and timestamp before and after each rental. Stored in the Blockchain. Quick. Easy. There’s no way the inspection would get lost.

Photector’s patent pending technology gives you irrefutable evidence should damage occur without a doubt in anyone’s mind–yours, your customer’s or a court of law.

Schedule an appointment to see how Photector innovates the rental industry.