en.Wedoany.com Reported - Briggs & Stratton will host two regional rental summits in 2026: the EMEA summit on September 29 at Frankfurt International Airport, focusing on total cost of ownership; and the US Rental e-Summit on October 6-7 at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, focusing on the commercial realities of electrification.
The agenda design for the two summits reflects the different stages of the European and North American markets. The European agenda revolves around total cost of ownership, reflecting that tightening emissions regulations, evolving machinery rules, and persistent grid constraints have forced operators to model the full lifecycle economics of every asset. The North American agenda focuses on the commercial realities of electrification, indicating that the market is still determining whether and how electric equipment can be profitable. This divergence provides manufacturers and investors with a reference point for observing where each region sits on the adoption curve.
Total cost of ownership has become a core metric for fleet strategy. In the rental industry, purchasing decisions were once primarily based on list price and reputation for durability. But when machines face higher upfront costs, tighter utilization targets, and fuel, maintenance, downtime, and disposal costs that vary with regulations and market conditions, operators need to make decisions through modeling rather than intuition. The European Rental Association has developed a free calculator to help members estimate the total cost of ownership and carbon emissions of construction machinery. Carole Bachmann from the association will attend the Frankfurt summit, aligning the agenda with the industry's efforts to establish a common analytical foundation for the rental economy.
The US summit, meanwhile, frames electrification as a commercial deployment issue, acknowledging that battery-powered equipment performs well in demonstrations but still faces risks of failure in charging logistics, work cycles that exceed a single charge, or rental models where battery costs are difficult to recover within billable hours. The summit agenda emphasizes utilization, integration, and measurable return on investment. As part of the summit, delegates will visit Pioneer's lithium-ion battery factory in Tucker, Georgia, a 78,000-square-foot facility that began production in 2020 and currently operates multiple production lines.
Confirmed European speakers include Carole Bachmann from the European Rental Association, John Smeets from Boels Rental, Neil Bravery from the Hire Association Europe, and executives from ELIET, Hainzl Motion & Drives, and Briggs & Stratton. The European summit, held at Frankfurt International Airport, offers behind-the-scenes tours, providing a backdrop of large-scale, high-availability operations for the event; the US summit is held at the Georgia Aquarium, with a factory tour on the second day providing an industrial anchor for the event.
Sjoerd van de Velde, Managing Director EMEA at Briggs & Stratton, stated that the summits aim to provide the industry with opportunities to share expertise and collaborate on solutions to shape the future of rental. David Frank, Senior Vice President and President of Electrification at Briggs & Stratton, described the rental industry as dynamic and forward-looking, positioning the sponsorship of the summits as a way to deepen existing partnerships and foster strategic collaboration for the next generation.
For the construction and infrastructure ecosystem that relies on rental equipment, whether contractors can specify electric equipment in projects, meet customer decarbonization expectations, and comply with low-emission requirements on sensitive sites is closely tied to the decisions rental companies are currently making about fleet composition and costs. The rental summits are precisely the venues where these decisions are tested against real operational data, and companies that first solve the challenges of total cost of ownership and integration will set the pace for the industry's electrification push.
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