ain for Rent has more than sixty locations in North America and Europe. The location covering the largest amount of territory is, of course, in Alaska.

A leading provider of temporary liquid-handling solutions including pumps, tanks, filtration, and spill containments, the company sells and rents equipment for projects ranging from flood relief to construction site dewatering, sewer bypasses, and industrial plant turnarounds, as well as oil and gas production.

Family owned since its founding in 1934, Rain for Rent, or RFR, made its debut in Alaska in 2002 when it brought forty-four 21,000-gallon tanks, along with the requisite pipe and fittings, to what was then Amoco’s Cook Inlet offshore oil platform. The battery of tanks and pumps operated from onshore through a pipeline on the seabed floor for a hydro test flush project to test the system’s integrity.

Following that project, RFR opened a shop in Kenai because Kenai and the Kenai Peninsula are where the “boots on the ground” action is.

A resident of Soldotna, Musgrove was an equipment dispatcher on the North Slope when he learned ARCO needed new tanks to replace those that had failed a corrosion inspection.

“I knew about these tanks in Kenai; visited with them; rented some; and then went to work as a truck driver at Rain for Rent for a little over a year before moving into sales,” says Musgrove.

That career move appeared to be a good one.

Now senior sales rep with RFR, the company has recognized Musgrove with several awards since he joined the Kenai team, including naming him the top sales representative in the West in 2017.

Paul Wilcox, RFR’s Kenai branch manager, also made quick work of climbing the ranks when he joined the team in 2007, also as a truck driver.

With only five employees, RFR’s Alaska branch may be small in number, but their presence is felt from the North Slope oil fields to Kodiak and Southeast. This includes investing in drop yards close to the action around Anchorage and Fairbanks.

And with that huge service area comes one of RFR’s bigger challenges—logistics.

“Everybody is trying to do the same type of work at the same time in the short summer season,” Musgrove explains.

Musgrove cites shipping equipment to Kodiak as an example, which involves getting material to Seward and then putting it on a barge or on the state ferry out of Homer.

Shipping pumps and pipe to Petersburg for a runway safety extension several years ago with Kiewit Pacific Co. posed similar challenges.

The refinery shuts down every four years to inspect boilers, pipes, tanks, and other vessels and to perform needed repairs. Petroleum and other liquids must be temporarily stored to facilitate the process.

“This year it took twenty-eight tanks, containment hose, pumps, and filters,” Musgrove says. “A lot of logistical planning goes into it: meeting with customers, interfacing, sending inspection reports to make sure we’re not sending them a junky old tank—lots of meetings and discussions.”

“When I was doing environmental, they gave us the support we needed for our turnaround projects,” he says. “We rent things like tanks, pumps, filters, and all the fixings that go with them…

We’ve had a few other companies that tried to get in the temporary tank market, but they just didn’t have the equipment and the quality that RFR has provided, so we always stuck with them,” Warrick adds.

“They’re literally a couple miles down the road from us. We can call them any time day or night—and we have. They’ve always been very responsive and always been willing to help us figure out solutions for things that we need.”

“One of my goals of being employed in this position here in Anchorage is to spread the word about RFR and the equipment and products available through our new location,” says Wright.

Born and raised in Anchorage, Wright also seeks to build relationships with local construction companies.

“We kicked off this year with the opportunity to help Kiewit Corp. with the runway extension project at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson,” says Wright. “Another key account we were able to assist is Granite Construction.”

Quality Asphalt Paving is currently renting pumps from RFR for use in their Seward Highway MP 17-22.5 rehabilitation project near Seward.

RFR’s dewatering and sewage pumps are diesel-powered pumps mounted on trailers that help construction contractors with various dewatering needs, such as bypassing creeks or groundwater excavation, Wright adds. RFR also does carbon filtration.

“Our season is short and our season is busy,” says Wright. “I just want to make sure I’m here to try and support those companies to be successful. That’s the biggest thing.”

Musgrove summed up RFR’s involvement with and appreciation for Associated General Contractors of Alaska: “It’s the networking and doing business with a bunch of great companies and people in the state of Alaska.”