In the busy oil and gas sector, the last thing a producer wants to do is establish contracts with multiple rental vendors who specialize in different types of services. A one-stop solution for equipment and reliable service works best for job sites on the Canadian Prairies, and Assured Rentals has stepped up to meet that demand.
“We started out wanting to solve an issue for clients and basically package four services into one,” says Bryce Fortune, president of Assured Rentals, Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. “We built combo units to eliminate four individual services and put it all on one trailer. It took off. They became really popular, and we ended up with the largest fleet in Western Canada with these combo units.”
Assured Rentals’ combo units, which also are called “bathroom combination units,” generally consist of a trailer stacked with heated washrooms, generator, light stand and garbage bin, with other customizations available. “They’re used across the board, mostly for oil field rentals, but we also have some construction rentals. Everyone seems to like them,” Fortune says.
Although the combo units are Assured Rentals’ primary focus, their inventory extends to light towers, stadium towers, wellhead platforms, office trailers, tracked loaders and “all sorts of stuff that our clients started requesting,” Fortune says.
Safety also is front of mind for Assured Rentals and its clients. “The wellhead platforms have been a great addition to our fleet as there is nothing else like it available in the industry,” Fortune says. “The articulating mobile platform [AMP] gives clients a whole new level of safe, efficient work space around the wellhead, with the ability to move up down and side to side as well as quick mob and demob. The AMP is a proprietary piece of equipment that is a game-changer for oil and gas wellhead access.”
More than simply providing the equipment, Assured Rentals prides itself on being a reliable presence on the job site for any operation and maintenance needs that arise. It’s all part of the solutions-based vision that Fortune had for the rental business he wanted to establish as an alternative to the traditional college-to-career path.
“Since I was a kid, college never inspired me,” he says. “I just felt like I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I started this business in 2017 after I figured out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. I came from the trucking industry, and I had seen every side of the oil field, from drilling to production. I always wanted to get into rentals because I saw this problem clients were having with paying for multiple separate services or just not getting high-quality service. I wanted to solve that for them and have more of a rental solution than just a rental company, and that’s what we built.”
Fortune says that vision has come to fruition. “We have guys that are on site 24/7 when we’re fracking, fueling up units, running the skid steers that we rent — basically taking care of all of our clients’ needs on site.”
While Assured Rentals has been in operation since 2017, Fortune says the game-changer for taking the enterprise to the next level came with the addition of business partner Darcy Lux in 2021.
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| Bryce Fortune |
“Since Darcy came along, we have 10X’d our business [expanded results ten times over rather than just by 10 percent] in just over a year, which is just incredible,” Fortune says. “I’m super grateful that he came in and helped me do that. Darcy has a lot of businesses and was a guy that I kind of looked up to. When he approached me about building this company together, I jumped at the opportunity. It’s good to have some guidance and experience in this industry because it’s pretty crazy.”
Today, Grande Prairie is a hot spot for oil and gas exploration and that, combined with the current high prices in the oil commodities market, means brisk business for Assured Rentals. But experience has taught Fortune to diversify, just in case.
“Grand Prairie is where everybody wants to drill. It’s where they’re putting up the plants and it’s where the resources are now. I think that’s been a large contributor to our growth. But the oil and gas industry is so up and down. We started right at the bottom of a recession. It couldn’t have been a worse time to start, but we pushed through it. And now that it’s getting busy and prices are up, everything just kind of falls into place a little bit better. But there’s always going to be that instability, which is why we’re branching into the construction industry,” Fortune says.
Offering the newest, most efficient equipment also is a priority for Assured Rentals as it falls in line with the organization’s philosophy of delivering high-quality, safe and effective equipment rental solutions.
“We like to have the newest equipment to stay relevant,” Fortune says. “On the environmental side, we aim to be more efficient. We have developed some systems like, instead of having four light towers, we have one light tower that runs four lights, and adding one bigger generator vs. four smaller ones. This is more efficient for us and for our clients as well because it saves in diesel and maintenance costs.”
Even as Assured Rentals’ principals Fortune and Lux work to broaden their inventory and specialties to accommodate industries beyond just oil and gas, their dedication to high service standards and being the single stop, efficient solution for customers will remain their calling card.
“We definitely want to be that one-stop shop and save guys from having to make a bunch of phone calls. And maintaining high-quality service is at the top of our list. We don’t just give someone a piece of equipment and send them on their way. I’ve always been super ‘boots on the ground,’ so we are with customers the whole way, from delivery to maintenance to being on their job site all the time. I’d say that is what sets us apart, for sure,” Fortune says.