Herc Rentals Brand Guidelines: Hertz’s 1965 Equipment Arm, Spun Off in 2016

An equipment business inside a car-rental group.

Herc Rentals began inside a car-rental company. English Wikipedia says the business was founded in 1965 as a subsidiary of The Hertz Corporation, and that its first name was Hertz Equipment Rental Corporation, shortened to the initials HERC. For about half a century it was part of the Hertz group, renting machines while its parent rented cars.

The equipment business grew large on its own account. English Wikipedia says that by 1994 it was the second-largest equipment rental company, and that in 2002 the Ford Motor Company looked at acquiring HERC but decided not to. The same source says that in 2013 the business moved its headquarters from Park Ridge, New Jersey, to Estero, Florida, on the Gulf coast of Florida.

What it rents has stayed broad. English Wikipedia describes a range of heavy equipment, tools, power generators and pumps, alongside sales of used equipment, and lists its customers as companies in construction, manufacturing, energy, civil infrastructure, agriculture and entertainment. English Wikipedia credits the period after 2015 with the addition of further specialty lines, set out below.

The link to Hertz still shows in the name. When the business left the group it kept the old initials and turned them into a word. English Wikipedia says the company was renamed Herc Rentals on the basis of the acronym for its previous name, so the brand carries a trace of its parent while no longer using the parent’s name. Hertz itself, the car-rental company, is covered in its own guide on this site.

A spin-off, a new name and a run of acquisitions.

The separation took two years. English Wikipedia says that in 2014 Hertz Global announced plans to spin off HERC as a separate publicly traded company, and that on 1 July 2016 Herc Rentals Inc. began trading independently on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker HRI. The rental company is owned by Herc Holdings, the listed parent. English Wikipedia says the separation also raised money that Hertz used to reduce its own debt, leaving the car-rental and equipment-rental businesses as two companies with separate shares.

The spin-off came with a change of leadership. English Wikipedia says Lawrence Silber became head of the business in 2015, led it through the transition, and became chief executive and president after the spin-off. The same source credits him with a new executive team, new branches and a sales force about half as large again, and with adding product lines such as power tools, climate control, power generators and commercial vehicles, along with other specialty equipment.

Since then Herc Rentals has grown by buying other rental firms. English Wikipedia says it has completed more than 50 acquisitions since the spin-off, and names among the earlier ones CBS Rentals, All-Star Rents, Dwight Crane and Reliable Equipment. It also names All Reach and Champion Rentals, and says the company put heavy investment into its rental fleet between 2016 and 2020 and again in 2021 and 2023. In February 2025 the trade magazine Rental Equipment Register quoted Silber as saying the company had completed nine acquisitions in 2024 alone, and had won a large share of national-account work on very large construction projects that year.

In its results statements, as reported by Rental Equipment Register, the company speaks of its scale, its broad equipment offering and its customer relationships, and of “Team Herc,” the name it uses for its staff.

How equipment rental companies present themselves.

Equipment rental and hire companies sell access rather than ownership, so their public identity is spread across depots, machines, vans and screens. This guide looks at the places where those identities appear as the companies publish them: photographs of depots and fleets, livery colours on machines and vans, online hire catalogues and apps, and the corporate pages that describe branches, listings and owners. No product or mark of any company is reproduced.

Much of the business has moved online. Sunbelt Rentals launched a mobile app in March 2022 that lets customers find, reserve and manage equipment and view invoices, the company said at the time. United Rentals added Equipment Fit, an augmented-reality feature for placing 3D models of machines on a jobsite, in August 2025, and an AI-based Equipment Agent for choosing equipment in March 2026, according to its own announcements. Sunbelt Rentals’ own website lists more than 14,000 product types, sorted into groups such as aerial work platforms, compaction and concrete equipment.

Corporate pages tell a different story: depots, listings and owners. Branch counts are a common headline figure, and they change with each takeover, so this guide gives them only as dated sources state them. Ownership changes are frequent too. In February 2025, Transport Topics reported that Herc Rentals had outbid United Rentals for H&E Equipment Services, and in March 2026 Sunbelt Rentals moved its primary listing from London to the New York Stock Exchange, the company said.

Each guide that follows sets out who founded the company, who owns it now and how it presents itself, and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word. Rental prices, fleet values and revenue are left out throughout.

H&E, specialty lines and very large projects.

The largest single step came in 2025. English Wikipedia says Herc Rentals bought H&E Equipment Services in 2025, its most significant acquisition to date, and that the deal enlarged the company by more than 30 percent, added 165 branch locations and widened its specialty fleet across major metropolitan areas. In July 2026 Rental Equipment Register quoted Silber as saying the company had completed the integration of H&E in the first quarter of 2026.

The company’s recent reports point in two directions. In its second-quarter and third-quarter statements for 2026, as reported by Rental Equipment Register in July and October 2026, Herc Rentals said its growth was led by national accounts and by very large projects, among them data centres, infrastructure, manufacturing plants and energy projects, and by a rising share of specialty rentals. International Rental News reported in October 2026 that it was the third large American rental business that season to raise its full-year outlook, after United Rentals and EquipmentShare.

Leadership has begun to change. English Wikipedia says Aaron Birnbaum became president of the company with effect from 1 January 2026, with Silber continuing as chief executive. The same source now gives the company’s headquarters as Bonita Springs, Florida, and Rental Equipment Register files Herc results under that location. English Wikipedia describes Herc Rentals as one of the largest equipment rental companies in the world, operating in the United States and Canada.

For the brand, the dates are plain: a name that began as an abbreviation inside the Hertz group became the company name in 2016, when the business was listed on its own, and it has since been the name of a much larger network after the H&E purchase of 2025.

For a design guide, Herc Rentals shows how a spun-off business can keep a link to its parent through a set of initials while building a separate identity. Compare Hertz, its former parent, and United Rentals, another large North American rental company. For this guide we use charcoal, amber and a pale concrete grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Herc Rentals’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.