Every company wants to find a “secret weapon” — the tool, trick, or practice that will take your business to the next level.

For Rafael Freire, founder and president of LineUp Services, he found it when he walked into the Sunbelt Rentals office in Houston, Texas.

Rafael has spent 33 years as a building service contractor, including 25 years working in facilities maintenance for ARAMARK. He decided to go out on his own in 2016, building LineUp Services to provide janitorial, floor care, and special services with quality foremost in mind.

Not long after he launched LineUp, he got a call from a recognized leader in the high-tech industry — a Fortune 100 company and a huge opportunity for a small business just starting out. The company had already enlisted two other contractors to clean a badly stained carpet, but neither had completed the job to the company’s level of satisfaction.

Rafael conducted a site survey and knew immediately what he needed to get the job done right: a Tennant EH-2 Extractor. The only problem: He didn’t have a Tennant EH-2 Extractor. He knew he didn’t have time to purchase the equipment. If he was going to land the job, he needed it immediately.

He called the team at Tennant for advice, and they referred him to Sunbelt Flooring Solutions in Houston.

Rafael got a tour of the Sunbelt facility and surveyed the machines in stock. They were new and clean and, best of all, available immediately. And it made him think: If he rented equipment, he could avoid the capital investment, the maintenance, and the depreciation that comes with owning everything outright.

It made sense financially, and it would give him access to pristine, modern equipment that would give a strong first impression — particularly with high-tech, high-caliber corporate clients.  

It was a profound moment, and it became a paradigm shift for Rafael and LineUp Services. Not only did he fully restore the carpet and exceed his customer’s expectations, he transitioned his business model to incorporate more rentals from Sunbelt Flooring Solutions. It’s become his “secret weapon” when bidding jobs.

Now, Rafael is on the cusp of transitioning from a small company to a medium-sized company — a surge in growth that has taken less than a year.

The experience also shifted Rafael’s perception of equipment rental as a whole: He thought he knew what it meant to rent: older machines, heavy on the wear and tear. But his experience with Sunbelt showed him that renting can open up a whole new world of high-end, well-maintained equipment — and help take your business to the next level.