Ardent Hire Solutions ________________________________________________________________________________________

“ AI is going to sweep the business. It’ s like a tsunami rolling across our business at the moment,” he says.

Jeremy is not holding back. Drawing on a career across industrial and service-led businesses, he is pushing Ardent further into that change, reshaping it around specialist equipment, digital systems and a model built on data, control and customer outcomes.

Sector shift

Ardent’ s response to the call for change took shape as Ardent 2.0, a shift that redefined the business’ structure and market focus.“ Two years ago, we became a specialist in telehandlers and roto telehandlers and launched Fuel-IT. We divested our excavator, dumper and powered access fleet and closed half our depots,” Jeremy shares.

Based in the UK, Ardent supports housebuilding, construction, infrastructure, and industrial projects across the country. The business has evolved from a generalist rental model into a more focused operation, with technology and service now playing a central role in how it supports customers.

Shifting from its initial broad business focus, Ardent has aligned its systems and processes around performance and customer outcomes.“ The hire costs are now only part of the total cost of operating a hard fleet. Using technology, we help customers manage all those other costs. It helps them improve productivity, reduce operating costs and risk by making operations safer.”

As the business model shifts, a gap emerges between how value is delivered and how it is often assessed, especially in cost-driven environments.“ The value that we deliver often far exceeds the hire price. People tend to focus on the hire price and miss the bigger picture,” he notes. Demand remains strong even as conditions tighten across the sector.

34