02.04.2020

New American dealer for Falcon

Danish spider lift manufacturer Falcon Lifts has appointed USM ReRents as its exclusive dealer for North America. The move follows Ruthmann’s acquisition of its long term distributor ReachMaster last month – see: Ruthmann acquires ReachMaster.

USM takes over all responsibilities for the sales, replacement parts, service and maintenance of the full range of the Falcon spider lifts throughout the US and Canada. The two companies say that they will also work closely on ‘strategic projects and operations’. As part of the new partnership USM is taking delivery of four new Falcon spider lifts, three on wheels and one on a tracked chassis.

Falcon Lifts chief executive, Thyge Mikkelsen, said: “At this point we intend to enhance and strengthen our sales and service representation in North America in a more direct and proactive way. We see great and unexplored business opportunities in the market for our type of products and services. We are therefore excited about our new partnership and looking forward to start our cooperation with such a well esteemed partner in North America. With the strong USM team, we see a bright future for our state-of-the-art Falcon Spider Lifts across the North American markets.”
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(L-R) Thyge Mikkelsen and Brian Falck Schmidt of Falcon Lifts

Tom Saxelby, USM vice president sales, added: “For over 30 years USM ReRents has represented some of the most outstanding products and manufactures in the world. Now we proudly add Falcon Lifts to this distinguished list.”

Founded in 1990, wholesale rental company USM ReRents (formerly US Markets/USM Rentals) offers a fleet of large boom lifts, MEC Titan booms, spider lifts, Jekko mini cranes and telehandlers to more than 1,000 rental companies across North America.

Vertikal Comment

This is something of a surprise, although it has been clear that the long term relationship between Reachmaster and Falcon has not been at its peak since the departure of former owner Finn Schlitterlau in September – see: Finn Schlitterlau leaves Falcon. The two companies go back to the very beginning when Reachmaster – formerly Falcon – was set up by Ebbe Christensen as a subsidiary of Falck Schmidt. The business later became independent in 2012 through a management buy out by Christensen – see: MBO at Reachmaster/Skako

While it is sad to see these two split up after so many years, the move to USM could add a different type of coverage for Falcon, in that USM currently runs big Teupen spider lifts, and will almost certainly add Falcons to its re-rent fleet, taking the product line to rental companies that simply cannot justify the investment in such big niche market machines. On the flip side it will be interesting to see how USM handles the atrium end user market which has been so lucrative to Falcon in the past and which requires a great deal of patience and application engineering input.

UPDATE See Reachmaster clarifies split with Falcon