On-demand capacity provider Fluid Truck announced Thursday it is launching an initiative, Fluid Truck Renew, to enable fleet owners to lease or rent out surplus capacity to bring in new revenue.
The company, founded in 2016, is an app-based platform that connects businesses with available capacity of commercial vehicles including cargo vans, box trucks and pickup trucks.
Rentals are available 24/7, and the platform offers visibility and insight tools enabling businesses to improve their delivery experiences without having to own equipment.
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As Fluid Truck grew, founder and CEO James Eberhard told FreightWaves a new market organically opened up: commercial fleet owners and lessors.
Eberhard explained that while businesses are able to leverage Fluid’s available capacity to deliver to customers, commercial fleets can also use Renew to offer their available equipment and create an additional revenue stream without having to manage any of the rental or leasing operations.
“We have built out a national framework across the country, so we can onboard your vehicles on our platform, manage and generate revenue for you,” he said. “Secondly, our technology offers insight on vehicle operations including telematics and maintenance predictions for oil changes and tire replacement.”
For fleet renters, this is particularly helpful in increasing the lifespan of their equipment investment.
“When we had commercial vehicles that came off rent early or reached the end of term, we wanted another avenue of revenue for the business versus remarketing the vans at auction, so we turned to Fluid Truck to monetize our vehicle inventory,” said Mark Gleed, remarketing manager at Kingbee Rentals LLC. “Fluid takes care of the maintenance, and we get access to the Fluid Truck platform for shorter-term rentals. Fluid [Truck] Renew gave our vehicles new life by allowing others to reuse these assets while becoming a viable source of income for us.”
While companies are using Renew to gain revenue from parked vehicles, Eberhard described how the platform is beginning to mirror the way property owners utilize Airbnb to build out real estate rental portfolios.
While some use Airbnb to rent out their properties when they are not being used, others buy property specifically to put on the Airbnb platform to easily scale and manage the operations of their business.
“We see people buying vehicles who have no experience running commercial fleets. … These new fleet rental or leasing companies are able to come to us and monetize those vehicles,” said Eberhard.
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