Your machine—skid steer, compact track loader, backhoe loader, etc.—is the core asset that drives your work. The way that you can expand and grow your business and work more intelligently is through the right attachments.
Two separate core themes in business—growth/expansion and lowering the total cost of operation—can both be tied to utilization.
Truth one: finding new ways to use existing assets allows you to do more styles and types of work—therefore allowing you to bid on and win more work within the footprint of your existing business.
Truth two: Utilization = billing hours. Greater utilization = more billing hours = greater profitability for an asset that you already own (Machine carrying costs are a constant. Profitability is the variable). Earning more money with an asset over the course of its life significantly lowers its total cost of ownership because you’re increasing its profitability. An extremely simple example: using your skid steer for snow removal in the winter months instead of wintering it in your garage. Sure, you have more inputs (service, oil changes, etc.), but the increased profitability is well worth it.
The machine you already own—skid steer, compact track loader, compact wheel loader, backhoe loader, excavator, etc.—is the core asset. Its carrying costs (monthly payments, insurance, etc.) are relatively fixed. The more you earn with it, the more value it drives your business—in this article we’ll look at how the relatively cost-effective addition of attachments (be it through purchase or rental) drives massive growth and profitability for businesses. All anchored in that most powerful word: utilization.
GROWTH/OPPORTUNITY
Businesses and work demands grow and change. Whether through the great recession (not that long ago, historically) or through the pandemic, the businesses that excelled the most at being able to pivot from one core function to another, or one capability to another, were the ones that survived and succeeded.
Business diversification—in good times or bad—is smart. It’s even smarter to do it in the good times so that you’re ready to power through the bad. Make more money now and fortify your business for future challenges.
Attachments are a critical gateway to doing this. Think of the full life cycle of a jobsite—what are the tangential tasks that other contractors do right now that you could do yourself? If you’re a contractor or landscaper, could you also do the land clearing and site prep? If you do a facility’s landscaping, could you also do its winter snow removal? Is your equipment capable of being used in disaster cleanup or other large-scale material handling or processing work?
The simple addition of an attachment in each of those cases—a mulcher, a snow push, and a grapple bucket—suddenly turn that asset into something you can use to bid on and win more jobs.
INCREASED PROFITABILITY
Everyone loves money. The core principle of utilization is that the more something is used, the more money it makes. Attachments allow you to do that—but it’s even deeper than that!
In the previous section, we talked about the ability to do more/new things—and that fits the bill: I’m using an asset more, so it’s making me more money, and therefore it’s more profitable (all true).
Profitability is a marathon, not a sprint. It can also be looked at in another way: what can I do to keep more of our earnings in-house versus subbing out to other businesses? You might not think much of subbing out a few thousand dollars here and a few thousand dollars there during the course of a larger, long-term job—but all of those subs add up. Could the simple addition of an attachment or two minimize the amount of work you have to farm out? Does the addition of a 4-in-1 bucket allow you to move, grapple, spread, and grade more material on the jobsite? Does the addition of a soil conditioner allow you to do final grade and seeding vs. contracting that out to a landscaper? Does an angle broom on a skid steer, compact track loader, compact wheel loader, tractor loader, or tractor loader backhoe allow you the ability to clean up a jobsites, streets, and parking lots as well as remove snow in the winter? Does a rototilt bucket with machine control on an excavator allow you to complete final contouring and grade that previously would have had to be done with a whole other machine?
In each of these cases, the addition of an attachment creates a world in which you are spending less money on other services or equipment to accomplish the same job.
SMARTER FLEET MANAGEMENT
Which brings up another great point: can the addition of an attachment allow you to do more with fewer machines? It’s a shocking thought coming from an equipment manufacturer, but it’s true: the addition of the right attachment to “Machine A” may make “Machine B” obsolete, and therefore allow you to sell it (lower business carrying costs) or deploy it to other jobsites where it can be more profitable (increased productivity/getting ahead of schedule). It also allows you to keep fewer machines on site for less clutter and less hassle.
LABOR ISSUE
We talk a lot about how the right attachments help you work smarter, not harder. And in a day and age when good skilled labor is hard to come by, the addition of the right attachments helps you do more with fewer workers on site and/or minimizes the amount of strenuous physical labor that you/your existing workforce has to perform. A good soil conditioner reduces the amount of manual raking. A tilt rotator and grapple bucket on an excavator simplifies boulder wall construction. A simple set of forks helps move palletized material off of trucks and throughout the jobsite closer to where the work is happening vs. relying on workers to carry/move materials in more physically demanding ways.
Attachments are a way to do more with fewer people, and to make sure your current staff is working with less strain and less opportunity for injury.
RENT VS. OWN
And you might read all of this and say “that all makes sense, but I’ll use that attachment on like 20% of my jobsites, so it’s not worth it!” That’s what your local dealer rental or independent rental outlet is for! Most equipment rental businesses carry an extensive array of attachments. This allows the rental company to shoulder the owning and operating costs of those attachments, and you can pass the rental fee for the attachment right on to the job.
Don’t let a low percentage of use for an attachment cloud your vision for greater use of the machine/asset to drive more utilization and profitability. When in doubt, rent it.
CLOSING THOUGHT
These are just a few of the ways that attachments can help improve and evolve your business. As we’ve been known to say: think beyond the bucket for ways that you can grow, improve, and enrich your business. Sometimes it’s not the addition of a new machine with a massive capital investment—sometimes it’s as simple as a much more practical/cost-effective addition of an attachment.
For More Information:
For more about CASE attachments that make sense for your business, visit casece.com.
Modern Contractor Solutions, June 2023
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