Balancing Customer-Owned Repairs and Rental Fleet Service

Arielle Cox

In every rental operation, service is the heartbeat of the business. It’s one thing when you’re only maintaining your own rental assets. However, things get a bit more complicated when you’re also supporting customers who bring in their own machines (e.g., for warranty service on equipment they purchased from your dealership, or for repairs on equipment they bought from you after you decommissioned it from your rental fleet).

Should Maintaining Your Rental Fleet Take Priority? It Depends on Your Business Model.

It goes without saying that customers expect you to treat their equipment with the same care as your own assets. However, if you consistently prioritize customer-owned equipment work orders over those for your rental fleet, you could negatively impact your availability, utilization, and, most importantly, your revenue. There’s no right or wrong answer across the board, but the right approach for your company will be dictated by your unique business model.

Equipment rental companies with a dealership branch that also sells equipment tend to prioritize customer-owned repairs more heavily. Service is a core part of their business model. Supporting customer machines isn’t a sideline; it’s central to the customer relationship and often a key revenue driver.

On the other hand, organizations with a primarily rental-focused business model may approach service differently. Some offer customer repairs to offset internal service costs or fill low-utilization periods. Others focus strictly on their own fleet to keep up with rental demand and turnaround expectations.

To guide prioritization, clarify your service model. Are customer-owned repairs central to your business or a secondary/ancillary service? Does your dealership provide service SLAs to customers at the time of purchase? Does seasonality play a role (e.g., should you create one set of rules for your busy season and a different set for off-season?) Clearly defining your rules helps you provide transparency to your customers and set clear expectations for what’s being repaired and when.

Consider the Urgency of Each Work Order

Whether rental fleet or customer-owned, any balancing act needs to account for the urgency of each repair. Downed machines in the field should almost always go straight to the front of the line. Preventive maintenance can be pre-scheduled – and with the right technologies in place, you can base those work orders on real run-time readings rather than loose estimates.

Similarly, you may want to prioritize certain VIP customers. However, there should be a clear company policy for who gets prioritized and when to prevent haphazard, on-the-fly decision-making.

Transparency and Efficient Service Management Make the Difference

At the core of every successful service operation is a strong service manager—one who communicates honestly and consistently, even when timelines get tight or workloads spike. However, that means that they need a clear pulse on upcoming work orders and priorities – not just a haphazard approach to servicing machines “as time allows” and a whiteboard with the next week’s plan loosely sketched out.

Equipment maintenance software that schedules work orders based on upcoming reservations, historic demand trends, and internal prioritization rules makes this easier on service managers. Whether you want to adopt a “first in, first out” queue or need to put customer equipment on the back burner during busy periods, the software can do the heavy lifting for you. Your service managers can spend less time manually triaging requests and more time managing your technicians, communicating with customers, and finding opportunities to make your service department more efficient.

To that end, today’s customers expect real-time updates, accurate timelines, and full visibility into the status of their equipment. They want to know that their machines won’t be pushed to the back burner, especially during busy seasons when shops are juggling both rental fleet maintenance and customer repairs.

Ask Better Questions to Provide Better Service

Understanding what customers truly care about starts with asking the right questions.

How do customers perceive your service workflow?
What matters more—speed, communication, or consistency?
Do they feel like partners in the process, or do they feel left in the dark?

Whether you're servicing your own fleet or supporting the equipment they rely on every day, these questions are the foundation for improving your service operations and delivering a better customer experience. Survey your customers to see where they expect the most value, then use this data to adjust your staffing, scheduling, and communication practices.

Aligning Service Priorities with Real-World Workflows

Whether you’re a dealership, rental company, or hybrid operation, the expectations around service are the same:

Give customers clarity.
Communicate early and often.
Treat their equipment with the same care you treat your own.
Make sure your team has the tools and processes to deliver.

Need help building efficient maintenance workflows that prioritize all your repairs in accordance with your corporate policies? InTempo’s team can help you more easily and consistently balance rental fleet repairs with customer-owned equipment servicing.

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