SmartEquip and its customers reached a major milestone last month when its OEM, dealer and fleet owner clients placed their 3,000,000th parts order via the SmartEquip Network. Parts order volume increased 50 percent from October 2008 to February 2009.

According to SmartEquip, clients estimate that the operational and transactional savings that the SmartEquip Network generates for both manufacturers and equipment fleet owners typically exceeds $50 per transaction. These savings are the direct result of reduced cost and increased efficiency throughout the entire order process, from improved equipment diagnostics and parts identification through final order transmission, purchase order and invoice reconciliation and fulfillment. Suppliers, dealers and fleet owners enjoy significant savings from an increase in speed, efficiency, ordering and diagnostic accuracy brought about by SmartEquip technology.

"Our the past year we experienced dramatic increases in parts volume transactions across our network," says Alex Schuessler, SmartEquip's chairman and CEO. "We believe this growth was in part driven by the severe economic downturn and the imperative for manufacturers, dealers and fleet owners alike to capture immediate cost savings. As a consequence, in the closing quarter of 2008, our business saw a 3X revenue increase from OEMs joining the network relative to the same period the prior year. For 2009, we remain firmly committed to rapidly growing the size of our company and the capacity of our network to support the industry at this very critical time."

In the rental industry today, about 1,300 branch and store locations are licensed users of SmartEquip technology to order parts and receive after-market service support. This is over and above the tens of thousands of users accessing the SmartEquip Network directly from their computers via a rapidly growing number of OEM-sponsored sites on the Internet.

The SmartEquip Network represents a significant opportunity for increased profitability for Sunbelt Rentals and is a major initiative within our company," says Charles Snyder, executive vice president-sales/fleet management for Sunbelt Rentals. The company's rental locations have streamlined the service and parts procurement process and significantly decreased the cost of fleet ownership and in running day-to-day operations.