In 2022, Avery Rents, Bellevue, Neb. will celebrate 60 years of providing rental services to the greater Omaha, Neb., and Council Bluffs, Iowa, area. But that’s only part of the story of the Faust family — who owns the company — and the century-plus connection with their community located just south of Omaha.
Avery Rents’ namesake is unincorporated Avery, Neb., located within Bellevue. The area’s name and claim to fame came from the Avery Brothers Feedlot, which at one time was the largest cattle feedlot in the world. Avery has been the residence of the Faust family for more than 125 years. It was on the site of a local gas station, where he bought newspapers as a kid that Erle E. Faust Sr. established Avery Rents in 1962.
“When Erle was a young man, he worked for Clay White’s United Rent-All in Omaha. He [Erle] built the building where we’re at today with plans to rent half of it to be a beauty shop and the other half to be a barber shop. Clay stopped down at the building and said, ‘This would make a good rental store. You should open one up here.’ So, my grandfather started bringing in some tools from home and things just evolved from there,” says Clint Faust, Avery Rents general manager, who operates the business today alongside his parents and current owners, Wayne and Carolyn Faust, and brother, Sage.
After Erle made the break from White to go solo, the rest is history.
While Avery Rents has remained a fixture in its original location for six decades, other things in Avery have changed considerably: neighbors, business management technologies and adjusting inventory to meet the shifting rental needs of clientele.
“We started out primarily with construction and homeowner rentals, and in the later years split into both equipment and party/event. We have a lot more party now than we started out with,” Clint says. “We work with a lot of homeowners, a lot of landscapers, different concrete companies and small contractors. A lot of the bigger contractors — with the interest rates now — have bought their own machinery.”
In addition to rental equipment, Avery Rents has been a longtime dealer of rental trucks, currently for the Penske line.
Aside from a sojourn as a hockey player in the St. Paul, Minn., area, rental has been the sole career for Clint. “All through my childhood, we were up here every day. Being a family business, it kind of evolved into working here. I tried getting hired in the rental industry up in Minnesota, but they weren’t hiring in the wintertime,” he says of his thwarted ambitions to launch a rental career in another corner of the Midwest.
Clint attributes Avery Rents’ ability to weather major industry challenges over time — like recessions, the pandemic and finding reliable employees — to the business’s inventory diversity and strong community ties.
“For the most part, rental is a pretty bulletproof industry,” he says. “The [2007-2009] recession, of course, had everybody worried. On the other hand, instead of hiring somebody, a lot of people saved a few bucks and did projects themselves — that didn’t turn out to be the worst thing for us. And during COVID, people I know who were strictly in party struggled. It’s good to have a wide variety of rental tools, so if something happens, you can lean back on something else.”
On the prospect of finding and retaining good help, Clint adds that “We’re pretty lucky that we’re family-owned. We have some good full-time people who have stuck with us. For the party side, we have a good core of guys who used to work with us in the past and will help us on weekends. They know what we’re doing and how everything works. We find a way to get things done. And, over the years, we’ve built up a contact list of people who just want to work part time — guys who are retired and just want to get out of the house and do something.”
One resource that has helped Avery Rents nearly every step of the way during their 59 years-and-counting run has been their American Rental Association (ARA) membership, which Erle established just two years into his company’s existence in 1964.
“The conventions are a great thing, and I recently got involved with being a board member on the ARA of Nebraska. The camaraderie, being able to reach out to other companies, ARA Insurance — our involvement in ARA has been very good,” Clint says.
While change is inevitable, some things in Bellevue with the Avery name have proven to be constant: Avery Road, Avery Church, Avery Elementary School — and Avery Rents. As Clint puts it on behalf of the enterprising Fausts, “We’re probably one of the older businesses in this area, with a lot of ties with different people and community organizations. There’s a lot of history here.”