Sunbelt Rentals Brand Guidelines: Ashtead’s 1947 Surrey Roots and a 2026 New York Listing

A Surrey plant hire firm that bought an American business.

The company now called Sunbelt Rentals has two starting points. The older one is British: English Wikipedia says the group was founded in 1947 in the village of Ashtead, Surrey, as Ashtead Plant and Tool Hire. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1986, and for most of its history it traded publicly as Ashtead Group plc.

The second starting point is American. English Wikipedia says Ashtead acquired an American plant hire business, Sunbelt Rentals, in 1990. The company’s own investor relations pages put it differently, saying that before 2025 Sunbelt Rentals operated under the UK-based Ashtead Group plc, “which owned the business since 1983.” The two dates are given here side by side.

Over the following decades the American business became the larger part of the group. When Ashtead announced in December 2024 that it planned to move its primary listing to the United States, it said the US was a “natural long term listing venue” because most of its profit came from North America and its leadership, most of its employees and its operational headquarters were in the US, English Wikipedia reports.

The British side took the American name. English Wikipedia says the UK business, formerly known as A-Plant, now trades as Sunbelt Rentals from more than 185 locations in the United Kingdom. Forbes, writing in June 2025, described Ashtead as operating in the US, Canada and the UK, with most of its revenue from customers in the US.

General Tool, Specialty and “The Perfect Rental.”

Sunbelt Rentals divides its offer into two parts. Its investor relations profile describes a General Tool business alongside a range of Specialty lines, among them Power & HVAC, Pump Solutions, Climate Control and Flooring Solutions, with scaffolding and modular buildings added to the list. The customer website’s equipment catalogue runs from aerial work platforms, scissor lifts and ladders to air compressors, compaction rollers and concrete tools.

The company’s public voice is built around a slogan. Its website calls its mission “The Perfect Rental,” which it describes as a vision built around the customer, and frames the business as a rental partner offering more than equipment. The investor relations profile lists the markets it serves as construction, industrial work, infrastructure, maintenance and live events, and describes projects that run from small developments to very large builds. The company’s strategy programme has carried the name Sunbelt 4.0, which an analyst quoted by Forbes in June 2025 said was gaining traction.

Sunbelt has also built out its digital channels. In March 2022 it launched the Sunbelt Rentals Mobile App on the Apple App Store and Google Play, which the company said lets customers search for equipment, make reservations, follow deliveries on project dashboards and pay invoices. In June 2023 the company said its online “Cart Abandon” customer journey had won “The Engager” category of the 2023 Adobe Experience Maker Awards.

Events are part of the brand too. In September 2025 Sunbelt Rentals was named the official rental equipment solutions and services partner for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Team USA, the company said; it listed Power & HVAC, heavy equipment, temporary fencing and scaffold among the services involved, and said it then had 35 locations in the greater Los Angeles area.

Depots, fleets and screens.

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.

A new name on the New York Stock Exchange.

The move to New York took just over a year. After the December 2024 announcement, shareholders approved the plan at an extraordinary general meeting in June 2025, with 96.4% in favour, Forbes reported on 17 June 2025; the group intended to keep a secondary listing in London. The company says Sunbelt Rentals Holdings, Inc. was incorporated in the United States in 2025, and English Wikipedia says a court approved the new US holding company in February 2026.

On 2 March 2026 shares of Sunbelt Rentals Holdings, Inc. began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SUNB, the company announced that day. Chief executive Brendan Horgan called it a milestone in the company’s growth, and the announcement described Sunbelt Rentals as a US-listed company with a substantially US-based business, reporting in US dollars, with almost all of its operating profit coming from North America over the previous twelve months. Former Ashtead shareholders received one Sunbelt Rentals share for each Ashtead share, and the company kept a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange under the same ticker. With that step the Ashtead name gave way to the name of its largest business, and the group left the FTSE 100, English Wikipedia says.

The company gives its scale in locations and people. Its investor relations profile, read in November 2026, describes about 26,000 employees and more than 1,600 locations across North America and the UK, with its base in Fort Mill, South Carolina; its customer website gives more than 1,500 locations and more than 14,000 product types. In its March 2026 listing announcement the company said it operated in all 50 US states and in eight Canadian provinces.

For a design guide, Sunbelt Rentals shows how an acquired brand can end up naming the group that bought it. Compare United Rentals, its North American rival, and Herc Rentals. For this guide we use field green, charcoal green, a concrete grey and a sun yellow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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