Business booms for rental business

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This article was published 20/09/2017 (2402 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s largest independently owned rental company — C&T Rentals and Sales Ltd. — is about to get even bigger.

Company founder and president Ed Dwyer said on Thursday that the family-owned firm expects to make an expansion-related announcement within the next few months.

But for competitive reasons he’s not revealing any of the finer details just yet, including whether or not the expansion involves the opening of another retail outlet.

“I don’t even want to go there,” he said.

“(But) we do have plans to expand. We’re not done.”

Dwyer was commenting on the eve of C&T celebrating its 30th anniversary and the official grand opening of its fourth retail outlet in the province.

That outlet is located in a new industrial park in Oak Bluff.

Although the company has had possession of the 10,000-square-foot building and approximately two and a half acres of land since April, Dwyer said it took several months to get all of the rental equipment moved in and for the store to become fully operational.

He noted a lot of the rental equipment came from the company’s store on Scurfield Boulevard, which had become too small to function effectively as a full-service construction equipment rental outlet.

So the construction equipment rental operations were moved to the new Oak Bluff store, which is twice as big, and the Scurfield Boulevard store was converted into a rental outlet for products used in staging events like weddings, grand openings, conferences and conventions. That includes things like tables, chairs, dishes and cutlery. The store’s customers include local hotels and golf courses.

“It’s open, running, and going crazy,” Dwyer said of the event-rentals store.

“The Canada Summer Games gave us a good kick-start, with us supplying all of their stuff, and it’s just taken off from there.”

He said the new Oak Bluff store is also doing well, with some of its business coming from other tenants who are moving into the industrial park.

“We were the first store there (in the industrial park), so if somebody needs a piece of equipment, we’re like a block away,” he said.

C&T’s other two retail outlets are on Dugald Road and on Wheatfield Road in the CentrePort Canada inland port site. C&T’s corporate head quarters are also at the CentrePort location.

The company’s construction equipment rental outlets sell and rent out a full range of construction equipment — everything from hand tools to aerial lifts and giant heaters. Dwyer said 80 per cent of their business comes from large construction companies and the rest comes from homeowners and handymen.

A second generation of Dwyers is also now involved in the business. Daughter Kelly manages the event rentals store, son Michael manages the new Oak Bluff outlet and daughter Shawna works in head office.

In 2015, the company was named Manitoba Family Enterprise of the Year by the Canadian Association of Family Enterprises.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca