14
HIRE AND RENTAL NEWS • AUGUST 2014
FEATURE
Victor Kiam bought Remington products
in 1979 after the company had lost US$30
million over the previous five years.
With his dynamism and catch phrase, he
turned the company around and sales
boomed. Don Ahern from US company
Ahern Rentals and Xtreme Manufacturing
is a dynamic bloke too who is intent on
doing the same with Snorkel - which his
company bought globally in October of last
year. His intention is to return the Snorkel
brand to worldwide prominence.
It would be fair to say, like so many other
companies, post GFC, Snorkel Australia
had its difficulties, but the purchase by
Xtreme Manufacturing is a well needed
boost to the company’s financial situation
and confidence in the marketplace. Snorkel
Australia officially changed its name
to Ahern Australia at the beginning of
April and Matthew Elvin, the Australian
Managing Director, wants to assure all
the company structure, locations and staff
remain unchanged.
Xtreme Manufacturing has made an initial
and significant investment in Snorkel spare
parts globally, improving relationships
with vendors and negotiating ongoing
supply commitments. In Australia, that
has already led to efficiencies that will
continue to see improved availability and
lead times on most commonly required
spare parts. A field service vehicle fleet
upgrade is underway to bolster Snorkel’s
service capabilities.
According to Matthew Elvin, Xtreme
Manufacturing is now refocusing on
production to increase the availability
of the Snorkel product range. This will
result in increased product availability on
selected models that will steadily improve
for the entire range throughout 2014.
The Xtreme Telehandler range, which
complements the existing Snorkel offering,
will be introduced gradually as local
compliance is achieved. The Xtreme
product is being introduced to satisfy
“I liked the product so much, I
bought the company”
For those of you old enough to remember one of the ‘80’s most famous marketing
slogans: “I liked the product so much, I bought the company”, the similarity with Victor
Kiam’s famous line concerning the Remington shaver and the recent acquisition of
Snorkel by Don Ahern’s Xtreme Manufacturing is indeed an interesting one.
specific customer needs not currently
serviced adequately in this market.
Ahern early years
Don Ahern has been in the construction
industry for 35 years. He started out
working in a small family run truck stop
and rental yard in Las Vegas. The rental
side of the business primarily offered
landscaping and gardening equipment and
trailers manufactured by his father.
Business was going well for a number of
years with the family entity manufacturing
specialised trailers for a national trailer
hire company called Nationwide. The deal
with Nationwide was the Ahern company
would manufacture the trailers and take
a percentage of all ongoing rentals -
affording the young company a stable
and consistent income. Unfortunately
Nationwide went broke some years later
and the Ahern business lost all its trailers
and main source of revenue. It survived,
but took time to recover.
At about this time, Don, being in his early
20s and looking for new opportunities,
noticed an interesting new machine on the
market and realised the potential rental
opportunities.
With a $12,000 loan from a local bank,
Don bought two scissor lifts and started
his own scissor, boom and forklift rental
business. It was 1978 and at a time of
terrific building construction activity
in Las Vegas. Almost all of the building
construction at the time used scaffolding,
so being the only company in the area with
access equipment meant business was
brisk. It wasn’t long before a further loan
secured even more equipment.
“We used to put the platforms on the
back of a truck and look for local building
contracts using scaffolding and offer to
leave the platform with them to try out,”
Don said.
“We converted lots of customers from
scaffolding to access platforms using that
sales method. After 12 years of building
this business I bought my dad’s company.
At that time my scissor and boom business
was turning over about $12 million and
my father’s business about $6 million. I
thought $18 million a year was great.
“One of the main breaks for us was the
huge, disastrous fire at the MGM Grand
Hotel and Casino (now Bally’s Las Vegas)
at the end of 1980 which killed 85 people.
The whole casino was gutted and needed
refurbishing. I was able to secure a deal
with a scissor manufacturer to supply
100 machines and these were all paid for
on the contract. This took my fleet to 115
units, a big step up,” Don said.
Ahern Scissors and Booms had established
itself in the Las Vegas area and took the
next logical step to expand operations,
starting in Los Angeles. From here
the business literally snowballed. The
company was buying from a number of
suppliers for its rental fleet, but after some
serious problems with one manufacturer
in 1985 Ahern switched completely to the
Snorkel product. This lasted for many years
until Snorkel went through some difficulty
in the 1990’s. Briefly Ahern had to add JLG
and Genie platforms to the fleet.
Today the Ahern Rentals company
operates 80 branches throughout the
US with 22,000 platforms and 4,500
telehandlers. Around 1,300 of the
telehandlers are manufactured by
Ahern’s company, Xtreme Manufacturing,
which specialises in rough terrain, high
specification machines. According to Don
these units can cost up to 15% more than
competitor telehandlers, but because of
their robust simple design have a 30 year
life-span.
The Ahern company has seen its fair share
of tough times. Prior to the GFC, and
overburdened with debt, Ahern Rentals
had to fight off a bitter take-over bid that
saw it file for US chapter 11 bankruptcy
