A short history of Afrirent
When a large fleet company wanted to rent the two 4ton trucks Senzo Tsabedze used in his construction company for a couple of months in 2003 he had no idea how much to quote. When it became clear what a large fleet company was prepared to pay per month for a truck he saw a gap in the marketplace.
In his own words, “I registered a fleet management company and started chasing business”…
In what was a predominantly white business, Senzo and his team had to work hard to be taken seriously and prove themselves in the fleet management industry. Acquiring capital proved to be one of the first challenging experiences.
“In 2004 landed my first contract for a municipality requiring 40 vehicles. I thought I’d take my awarded tender to the bank, and they’d be as excited as I was and provide the required finance. But it was not the case. In fact, I had to go into a joint venture with an established white owned company for the bank to be comfortable to finance the deal.”
Drive and dogged persistence to build from then onwards proved enough to start doing it themselves.
“It took time to prove that we know what we are doing and to be taken seriously as a contender.”
The rest, as they say, is history. And this history is in the making. Senzo’s uncompromising focus on building strong relationships with clients and creating and maintaining a positive, learning environment for the team lead Afrirent to grow exponentially from this first success.
“Afrirent is a family and everyone who works here is part of this family. We look after each other and help and guide each other wherever we can.”
Intelligent expansion into support systems and technology like tracking and monitoring, vehicle acquisition, maintenance and support and fuel supply has seen Afrirent grow from those first two trucks to managing an extensive fleet of cars, trucks and vans across South Africa.
Today Afrirent’s offering covers the full value-chain of fleet management, and our horizontal integration strategy to expand into supplementary industries has really taken off since 2017.
