Rental penetration is a leading indicator most people read backwards. When contractors shift from owning to renting, it usually signals uncertainty about how long the backlog lasts, not weakness in current volume. Both things are visible in the American Rental Association’s latest quarterly numbers.
The forecast, produced for ARA by S&P Global and distributed through its Rentalytics program, puts combined U.S. construction and industrial equipment and general tool rental revenue up 3.4% in 2026 to $83.5 billion. ARA describes that as essentially unchanged from the previous quarter’s projection for the year. The interesting part is the out-years, which were raised: 4.4% in 2027 and 5.1% in 2028, both above what the association projected three months ago.
The average is doing a lot of work
Tom Doyle, ARA’s vice president of program development, said the results are bifurcated, and put it directly: if you have any of the large infrastructure projects or data center buildouts, you’re in a stronger market with generally better results.
That single sentence is the story for anyone renting equipment this year. A 3.4% aggregate covers rental houses serving megaproject and hyperscale work that are pulling away, and houses serving general commercial and residential work that are not. Fleet mix, geography and account concentration determine which side of the number a given yard lands on, and a national average tells an individual contractor almost nothing about what its own rates will do.
Canada is outrunning the U.S.
Canadian combined rental is forecast at 5.2% growth in 2026 to $6.3 billion, then 5.4% in 2027 and 5.5% in 2028. ARA attributes the outperformance to infrastructure spending and oilfield development, which is a cleaner demand story than the U.S. picture because it isn’t split between a booming segment and a flat one.
The risk isn’t domestic demand
Scott Hazelton, managing director at S&P Global, named energy-price transmission from the Iran conflict as the main downside. Not U.S. demand directly, but inflation passing through energy rates on constrained supply, with Strait of Hormuz shipping risk behind it. For a rental fleet, fuel and freight are the two costs that move fastest and pass through slowest.
Every number here is a projection rather than observed data, produced by a trade association and compiled by S&P Global, and the Doyle and Hazelton quotes come through trade coverage of the release rather than from the association’s own page.
The structural shift Doyle points at is real regardless. Access economics beat ownership economics when a contractor can’t see far enough ahead to depreciate a machine, and that is the position most non-megaproject builders are in. The Toledo Museum of Art gallery reinstallation is a good example of the market’s other half: a real, funded, institutional job that closed its galleries in December and still hasn’t named a general contractor, because the owner is finalizing scope before it goes out to bid.
Sources: Equipment Journal and Equipment Journal.