EquipmentShare (YC W15) goes public

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/equipmentshare

EquipmentShare (YC W15) Is Like Airbnb for Construction Equipment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9170963 - March 2015 (10 comments)

EquipmentShare, the Airbnb of construction, raises $26M - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13473185 - January 2017 (0 comments)

EquipmentShare raises $5.5MM for peer-to-peer marketplace for heavy equipment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11769516 - May 2016 (0 comments)

An interesting related recent podcast is The Answer Is Transaction Costs episode Parts is (Not) Parts: The Life Cycle Problem for Heavy Equipment. Part of the discussion is orienting a biz to what is actually being sold. Is the equipment-time being sold or is the capability being sold? When the capability is sold the story becomes more of a total supply-chain rather than simply static capital good.

https://taitc.buzzsprout.com/2186249/episodes/18387317-parts...

Synopsis:

  We trace how Alex Schuessler, the once and once-again President of 
  SmartEquip--also a scholar of expressive choice!--built a platform that makes 
  machines more profitable by erasing the friction between parts, service, and 
  uptime. The rental economy, Japan’s utilization model, and IoT diagnostics 
  reveal why transaction costs, not price tags, decide who should own and who 
  should rent.

If you aren't vertically integrate with repair, personal screening of renters, transport, education you are basically fucked in the heavy equipment rental business. The IT end of it is by far the easiest part.

Heavy equipment isn't anything like renting cars.

A difficult part of heavy equipment is that it relies heavily on personal contacts, operator skill, and having market advantage on repairs (in-house skillset) in order to operate it profitably.

Your typical equipment renter beats the everliving fuck out of the machine, operating it improperly, not letting hydraulics warm up, not taking care of the engine, doesn't lubricate the machine in the field, puts large force on the equipment with cylinders extended etc etc. It's not a model that can work anywhere close to something like car rentals where the renter can expect the police to pull them over if they really thrash the equipment that at least the median renter will only push the car so hard.

I live in a DIY heavy rural area and I have seen these guys go bankrupt while every other rental business in the area succeeded. It's a brutal business. The guy I have seen locally succeed the most basically works on the anti-model of EquipmentShare -- he gets renters largely via word of mouth and has people size you up when you enter his facility and if they think you are a tool they will only rent you something of small value to see if you beat the shit out of it.

the article picture was retouched very badly: is it just me or the white shirt guy has a complete unnatural eyes position?

https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/content/images/2026/01/will...

Does anyone else find the AI writing excruciating? It's not that hard to prompt the AI to not write in AI-ese. And it's a million times better if a human writes it. It's low effort just to paste the slop....

The tells:

"EquipmentShare’s founders grew up in a commune where rules were strict, and self-reliance wasn’t a slogan — it was a necessity."

"The EquipmentShare founders didn’t start by trying to “disrupt” an industry. They started by solving their own problem."

"Over time, they didn’t just build a marketplace. They built an operating system for the jobsite."