Daniel “Dan” Kaplan died Feb. 28, 2021. He was president of Hertz Equipment Rental Corp. from 1982 to 1997. During his 15-year tenure, he helped grow sales from $58 million to more than $500 million. He also was the founder of Daniel Kaplan Associates, Morrison, N.J., a consulting group focusing on emerging issues in the service industry, including rental. Kaplan also wrote the 1994 book, “Service Success: Lessons From a Leader on How to Turn Around a Service Business.”
Throughout his more than 25 years in the rental industry, Kaplan purchased rental companies in the United States and Europe and opened more than 100 greenfield rental locations around the world. He worked with rental companies, dealers and manufacturers to launch rental operations in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Kaplan also performed operational reviews in more than 2,000 rental locations.
He was inducted into the Rental Hall of Fame in 2006. Kaplan reflected in a March 2006 Rental Management article about what the honor meant to him.
“This is very, very gratifying after a long career in the industry,” he said. “There is a feeling of accomplishment as you see things you believe in coming to fruition for the industry. There are things I worked on, and people at Hertz worked on, to move and affect the industry such as scale, scope and professionalism. The industry has moved from being informal to a more structured, major operation. There are rental companies today that are $3 billion in size. You will see some that will be more than $10 billion in size. Rental is not like other industries. It is a more formal and professional process with more consistent products. And you see customers changing to rental as rental companies provide better customer service, machinery and quality.”
In 2013, he also was presented with the European Rental Association’s (ERA) Lifetime Achievement Award.