Who are Commercial Truck Renters? When and why do they need to rent trucks? Where they are located?
As PACCAR describes on their truck rental service website:
"Seasonal spikes in business, new market opportunities, and vehicle breakdowns can all create a need for additional trucks on a short-term basis. For many companies that operate trucks, rentals are a flexible and essential component of their transportation strategy."
As described in Ryder's 2021 annual report,
Commercial Rental. We offer rental vehicles to customers that have a need to supplement their private fleet of vehicles on a short-term basis (one day up to one year in length) to handle seasonal increases in their business or discrete projects. ChoiceLease customers also utilize our commercial rental fleet to handle their peak or seasonal business needs, as substitute vehicles while their lease vehicles are undergoing maintenance, and while they are awaiting delivery of new lease vehicles. Although a portion of our commercial rental business is purely occasional in nature, we focus on building long-term relationships with customers so that we become their preferred source for commercial vehicle rentals.
Here are some ideas to further your research:
1. Identify the industries that heavily rely on logistics and truck rental.
a. As Penske mentioned in their descriptions, We service commercial customers across all industries: Healthcare, Logistics, Industrial Manufacturing, Automotive, Packaging, Food & Beverage, etc.
b. As Ryder illustrated in their Annual Report
c. Conduct some research online for industries that rely on logistics and transportation, you would encounter articles, for example,
2. Mapping these industries with the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Such information will help you understand the scope of the industry and using the NAICS code to search databases is often more effective. NAICS sources include the following. Browsing the NAICS code, adding the industries that are more relevant to truck rental industries mentioned above to create a NAICS list of possible commercial customer industries. or you can also use the Reference Solutions database directly (see below) and its filter function for the major industry group.
For example, the related industry code can include:
3. Use Reference Solutions and the industry code identified to identify the businesses in the industry (potential customers), their locations, and create a heatmap to see where they are. Make your own justification for what industries to include/prioritize. Do you want to consider the location of the business as the main factor or do you want to consider the size of the business (no. of employees) or the sales volume as well? Play around and try different options provided by the database.
Reference Solutions (Chester County Public Library Database) Contact Grace Liu for a WCU Library Group Card No. or Get A Chester County Library Card for yourself.
Search millions of private and public businesses for information on the competition, business demographics, and target markets. Reference Solutions step-by-step guides, webinars, and training materials are available to help you better understand how to use the search features and produce a strategy at home, on the go, or at the Library.
Choose modules including:
U.S. Business Database (70 million businesses)
Advanced search--> Choose Geography (try different ways and see which one is best for you), for example, search by County, Philadelphia, PA; Business Type (above the geography column box) (major industry group) for example wholesale -> click view results.
On the search result page, click heatmap to view where the most wholesale businesses are located. Find the options above the picture to Print or Export the heatmap. You can see the heatmap below:
The Heatmap of 1,983 Businesses operating in the Wholesale industry in Philadelphia and 50 Tally results by Zipcode
