ARLINGTON, WA Atlas Copco Construction Equipment has placed eight service centers within a day's drive of the majority of rental company locations across the U.S. including one in Arlington, Washington, as part of its new service strategy.

The Atlas Copco technicians at the service centers handle major repairs and refurbishments, which could take a week or more to complete at rental companies. This frees technicians to focus on providing critical, responsive support for key customer industries.

The technicians in the Arlington Service Center are experts in repairing and refurbishing products that are in most demand in the region. The facility shares the West Coast region with the Atlas Copco Service Center in Santa Ana, California.

Atlas Copco technicians go through approximately 80 hours of training per year. They can service not just Atlas Copco equipment, but also all brands. As long as the piece of equipment is in a class that the company manufactures - compaction equipment, compressors, generators or hydraulic breakers, for example - it can be fully serviced and repaired quickly in a nearby service center. In addition, Atlas Copco engineers are available to help when service center technicians run into particularly challenging or unfamiliar projects.

When repair isn't enough, the technicians can often refurbish machines to extend their life and reduce total cost of ownership. When it's possible, refurbishment costs much less than buying a new piece of equipment, and the end result is a machine that looks nearly new, operates optimally and is extremely reliable. To date, Atlas Copco has refurbished more than 1,000 compressors and thousands of other machines.

Matt Cadnum, Vice President of Sales, Rental Channel, at Atlas Copco Construction Equipment, said the Atlas Copco technicians not only take pressure off of rental operations' maintenance staffs; they also repair and refurbish equipment for operators in the region's major industries.

Atlas Copco is the first equipment manufacturer to offer more than two service centers in the continental U.S. Its eight facilities are in regions with high concentrations of rental companies and significant Atlas Copco equipment usage. Other service centers are in Covington, Georgia; Independence, Ohio; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Santa Ana, California, LaPorte and Corpus Christi, Texas. When necessary, trucks based at those centers can service equipment in the field.

"With our setup, if you drew eight 200-mile-diameter circles on a map around our service centers, about 90 percent of rental businesses would be within those circles," said Cadnum. "That's a big footprint that provides huge advantage to our rental customers."