Most people in rental didn’t plan to end up here. They fell into it, fell in love with it, and built something real.
That’s exactly how Chris Graeler got started. He answered a help-wanted sign at 16. Almost 30 years later, his company, Expert Rentals in Missouri, made the ARA’s 2026 Market Movers list as one of the fastest-growing rental companies in the country.
I sat down with Chris on episode 106 of The Rental Roundtable to talk about how he pulled it off. If you’re trying to grow an independent rental business, or thinking about starting one, his story has a lot to teach.
From a Help-Wanted Sign to a Bank Loan
Chris didn’t grow up around rental. His parents never rented anything. One day at 16, he drove home a different way and passed a rental store with a sign out front. He figured it beat bagging groceries, so he pulled in, filled out an application, and got hired on the spot.
He spent seven years at that homeowner-rental store, then moved to RSC around 1999 to learn the aerial and commercial side of the business. That’s where he picked up the skills he’d need to run his own shop. When a store came up for sale a couple hours away, he toured it, looked at the worn-out equipment, and thought he could do it on his own.
So he wrote a business plan. He’d never written one before. He took it to bank after bank until one finally said yes. But that yes came with a condition.
“They agreed to loan me money as long as I would put up every asset that I currently owned, and they could repossess that asset if I didn’t pay them back.” Chris Graeler, Owner, Expert Rentals, (5:47)
That’s the kind of bet a lot of founders make. You put your house, your savings, and your name on the line because you believe in the business. Chris did his first rental on March 15, 2007. He still has that first contract hanging in his office today.
The First Tool Was Software That Just Worked
Before he could rent a single machine, Chris had to stock a whole store. He did it in two days of walking the 2007 ARA show floor with a fresh loan and a long list. It was a lot to absorb fast, but he made it happen.
For software, he went back to the same system from the store where he first got hired. It was an old DOS setup with a dot-matrix printer and tractor-feed paper. No frills, but it did the job.
“If I can put technology in there to make it quicker and easier of what they’re looking for, that’s the approach I try to take.” Chris Graeler, (27:32)
That point still holds today. Your software’s main job is to get out of your team’s way. Back then, solid meant it didn’t crash. Now it means your counter staff can check availability across every location in seconds, invoices generate without manual entry, and customers can book online without tying up your phones. The bar moved. The goal didn’t. Software should make the work easier, not harder.
How to Decide What Equipment to Buy
One of the hardest calls any operator makes is what to add to the fleet. Buy the wrong machine and it sits in the yard. Chris has a clear way to think about it. He frames big buys the way Jeff Bezos frames decisions: one-way doors and two-way doors. A one-way door is hard to undo. A two-way door lets you walk back out if it doesn’t work. For Chris, most equipment buys are two-way doors.
“It’s an investment in an asset. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you still have a tangible asset that you can recoup some of your money out of.” Chris Graeler, (22:46)
That mindset gave him the nerve to try things his customers had never asked for. He bought one spider lift, a narrow tree lift that fits into backyards, just to see if it would rent. Demand caught up. Now he runs about eight of them.
The lesson for growth-minded operators: most fleet decisions are reversible. If it doesn’t rent, you still have an asset you can sell.
When the Building Caught Fire
Growth is never a straight line. In 2016, Chris was at the ARA Show in Atlanta when his phone rang at 3am. The alarm was going off at the new facility he’d moved into five months earlier. He told them to send someone. Then came the call he’ll never forget. The building was on fire.
He lost the whole office building. Most of his equipment was parked outside, so the fleet survived. But the business ground to a halt while he sat in an airport, hours away. He got his phone lines forwarded to a cell phone and waited for his flight.
By Friday, his team was back up and running out of the shop, answering cell phones and handwriting contracts. They worked out of an 8-by-40 storage container for nine months while the building was rebuilt. There were days it tested him. He kept going.
“You’ll look back on it and think it was just a bad little dream of one night, and you’ll come out stronger because of it.” Chris Graeler, (19:14)
Ten years later, Chris calls the fire a speed bump. At the time it felt like the world was ending, and now it’s just part of his story. That resilience is what separates the operators who make the Market Movers list from the ones who take the insurance check and walk away.
Track Every “No,” Not Just the Lost Rental
Here’s the part of our talk I think every operator should take back to their shop. Most rental companies track around 20% of their missed rentals. Chris tracks all of them, and then some.
“Give me your no’s of the week. I want to know what we said no to.” Chris Graeler, (24:37)
Every week, everyone who answers the phone reports what they said no to. Was it a piece of equipment you don’t carry? A delivery you couldn’t get there fast enough? A missing attachment? Even the customer who asked for it free. Chris treats that whole list as a demand signal. It tells him what to buy next, where to add trucks, and how to win business he’s losing right now.
This only works if your team trusts you. Nobody wants to walk in and list all the business they lost. You have to build a culture where surfacing a no is a win, not a failure.
Good technology helps here too. When your calls, emails, and texts all live in one place, you stop guessing about your nos and start seeing them clearly. That’s exactly what Quinn, our AI agent, was built to do. It answers after-hours calls, books rentals, and captures the missed opportunities that usually slip away. The nos become data you can act on.
Make It Easy to Rent From You
Chris thinks about customer experience the way we all think about Amazon. You search, you tap twice, and it shows up at your door. He wants renting from him to feel that easy.
Some of that is technology. Some of it is just paying attention. His team learns to recognize a regular’s truck pulling into the lot, then starts pulling that customer’s equipment before they even walk in the door. In and out, no friction. For an independent, that combination of modern tools and personal service is your real edge over the nationals.
Do What You Do Best, Hire Out the Rest
As Chris scaled, he hit the wall every founder hits. He started as employee number one, doing every job: building equipment, writing contracts, loading trailers, running the counter. The best advice he got was short.
“Do what you do best and hire out the rest.” Chris Graeler, (30:30)
So he fired himself from each job and hired people who were better at it and loved it. That freed him up for the work only he could do. If you’re trying to grow, you can’t be the bottleneck. Double down on your strengths and let go of the rest.
Keep Building
Chris started with an idea on paper and years of experience earned one job at a time. He bet on himself, survived a fire, and built a company that now sits on the ARA Market Movers list. The common thread through all of it is a refusal to let daily friction win.
At Quipli, we built our platform for operators like Chris and like you: people running real, growing businesses who deserve software that works as hard as their team does. If you’re tired of fighting your tools, that’s the exact problem we set out to solve.
