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Construction Contractors Hub
1.8k members • Free
3 contributions to Construction Contractors Hub
9d •Â
Equipment Rental Poll
Hey all, I spent 15 years as an equipment rental sales rep. Had a successful career, worked at a Cat dealer, a regional rental house, and a large national company after we got acquired. I recently left to build an AI tool, specifically for contractors. Here's what I saw from the inside: all the software tools in rental are built for the vendor, not the customer. Pricing benchmarks, fleet dashboards, utilization analytics, all of it faces the rental house. Contractors just get invoices and pay. So I built a rental intelligence tool for the buyer side. Upload an invoice, see if your rates are fair, flag unnecessary charges, and benchmark against your market. Rate the vendors, and give your team 1 dashboard that combines your entire rental picture/process. The problem I'm running into is trust. I think some people are skeptical of a former sales rep collecting their data, even if the tool is built to help them. So I'm genuinely asking, what would make you trust something like this:
Poll
2 members have voted
1 like • 9d
Thank you for taking the time to respond, super helpful. I have a lot of this in place, but need to make it more visible(transparent) for the users once i get them to my site. The entire company is based around price transparency, and leveling the playing field. I spent the past 8.5 months building, i'm a non tech founder so the UI, security is all super thought out but just internally. i built my tools around RAG, and inserted as much domain logic as i can. its basically like talking to a Rental rep/ equipment advisor, just need a clearer message I think! Thank you again,
0 likes • 7d
@Tim Fairley my research on the industry is showing me one thing. Big tech is interested in the rental space. They're all building the same tools. Take contractor data, aggregate it, benchmark pricing, layer in telematics, ect. Sunbelt and EquipmentShare just went public. Herc, United, and Sunbelt acquring companies and are all investing heavy in AI. They're building algorithms that read contractor buying patterns and use them to raise prices. That's not speculation. There's a federal class action right now (MDL 3152). Rouse Services DBA RB Global is named, along with the major rental vendors. If the allegations hold up, this may be a valuable tool for both sides. Pricing data, and vendor ratings all backed by a real data set. I dont want to sell a software, i want to sell something to people that saves them money, builds a SOP their team can follow and not have to call multiple vendors.. if you have "3 quotes" thats not a process, its the same thing everyone does. And they know how to take advantage of it. Its def not a perfect but i think its useful
0 likes • 27d
Filter the noise and learn it now. AI is already being used to build the tools that will be pushed on you. If you understand it first, you get to decide what works for your business instead of being told what to buy
Jan 24 •Â
Introduce Yourself
I'm keen to hear who everybody is, and what their goals are I assume you already know who I am. But if you don't I'm Tim. I worked for 8 years for big contractors on road, rail, renewable energy projects. I've always worked for head-contractors. I recently worked for some smaller contractors as a consultant when I left my job doing estimating and contract management. It was good, but I found it hard to see a path to scale (other than just starting a contracting business myself) So I instead decided to build software, and found that that's 100x harder than I thought and a very easy way to lose money
0 likes • 27d
Ross Novak, Cleveland Ohio. Spent career in rental industry. Trying to leverage my 15 year domain experience with AI tools. Had no prior code or tech experience. Built my MVP using claude entirely. Looking forward to learn from this group
1-3 of 3
@ross-novak-4644
Founder of Construction SaaS app - The Rate Daddy, Pricing intelligence in Rental industry, for the buyer.
Active 6d ago
Joined Mar 18, 2026
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