Valley-Based Sam’s-U-Rent Sold to Buena Park Company
Family-owned Sam’s-U-Rent of Van Nuys, a business with deep historical roots in the San Fernando Valley, is being sold to Able Equipment Rental, which caters to the construction and entertainment industries, the Orange County firm announced Monday.
Terms of the transaction between the two privately owned companies were not released.
The merged company will be headed by Jeff Butler, president of Buena Park-based Able, which mainly supplies telescoping platforms. No name changes are planned at any of its seven rental lots in Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties, company officials said Monday.
Sam’s-U-Rent, which focuses on rentals of vehicles, trailers and construction equipment to homeowners and small contractors, was founded in 1935 by Sam Greenberg, the son of a Russian emigre who had set up a blacksmith shop in the Valley a generation earlier.
Greenberg, who died in 1991, was a well-known San Fernando Valley businessman, philanthropist and political figure who bankrolled campaigns and served on Los Angeles city commissions, spending many years on the city airport commission.
His son, Steve Greenberg, the company’s president, said he will become a consultant to the new company.
Greenberg said he and other family members received an unspecified amount of cash for the company but remain owners of Sam’s three rental locations in Van Nuys, West Hollywood and West Los Angeles. The other rental locations for the combined business are in Buena Park, Mira Loma, Riverside and Santa Fe Springs.
Greenberg, who has lived in Phoenix for several years, said the complementary business lines and locations made Able a natural fit with Sam’s. There will be only a few layoffs among Sam’s 85 employees, he said.
Able wanted to enter Sam’s specialty field of consumer rentals, a direction its Riverside location already has taken, Greenberg said.
Sam’s, with a catalog of about 1,000 rental items, struggled through the recession of the early 1990s, seeing annual revenue fall from $11.5 million to $8.5 million in 1993. Aside from a bump up after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, revenue has stayed flat, Greenberg said. Meanwhile, Able had capital and a desire to move into Los Angeles County.
“The business is like a lot of others these days,” Greenberg said. “If you aren’t expanding, you’re going to wither.”
Both companies also have a history of charitable work, including support for Habitat for Humanity, a tradition that is expected to continue, he said.
Greenberg said he has lived in Phoenix for the last 2 1/2 years, running a separate property development and management business with industrial sites in California and Arizona and “crossing the Colorado River once a week” to manage Sam’s as well.
