A wet rural Ontario concession road in late autumn running past a small municipal works yard, where a motor grader and a backhoe are parked beside an open-sided salt shed

GruShare

Ontario municipalities, leasing equipment from each other.

A GruMac venture

The unit nobody can justify buying

A grader, a chipper, a seventy-foot lift: each one earns its keep for a handful of weeks a year. Equipment prices have climbed faster than the capital budgets meant to cover them, and a purchase that works three weeks in twelve months is a hard thing to defend at a council table.

The story changes by township. The arithmetic does not. Somewhere within an hour’s drive, another municipality has already bought the machine you need and is watching it sit for eight months of the year — and is carrying a gap of its own that you could fill.

GruShare closes that loop. It is a GruMac venture that connects Ontario municipalities directly, so a unit idle in one township goes to work in the next one over, on a contract both sides can put in front of a council.

What a shared unit actually costs

Pick a unit and the months your season actually needs it. The comparison is against what the same machine costs on the commercial rental market over the same period.

Equipment

Months of use a year

A seasonal unit typically earns its keep for three or four.

Commercial, a month: $17,000
Through GruShare, a month: $5,000

Commercial rental $51,000

Through GruShare $15,000

Saved against commercial rental

71% below the commercial rate, over 3 months of use.

Figures are GruShare’s published Ontario municipal rates against typical commercial rental. A real quote depends on the unit, its condition, the term and the haul.

One unit, twelve months

In service: 8 months
Parked: 4 months
Utilization: 67%

Winter user, November to February
Summer user, May to August
Parked

Four months a year is a hard purchase to defend at a council table. The same unit, worked by two municipalities whose seasons do not overlap, is in service two thirds of the year and each side pays only for its own months.

How it works

From idle asset to active lease

Match

We connect municipalities with compatible needs: an idle asset in one township against a gap in the next one over.
Facilitate

Vetted contract templates, licensed inspections before and after the term, and transport logistics, arranged for both sides.
Manage

Monthly invoicing, usage tracking and reporting, so neither municipality is chasing paperwork or each other.
Repeat

Every completed lease builds toward a standing arrangement, and toward a regional network that already knows how to work together.

Contracts, inspections, transport, invoicing and reporting are GruShare’s work, not your staff’s. The administrative load on either municipality is meant to be close to nothing.

A tale of two towns

Two Ontario municipalities, three hours apart, each holding exactly what the other was short of. Neither had raised a dollar of capital.

Township of Minto

Needed: A motor grader, against a purchase price north of $500,000 and a tight capital budget.
Had, idle: A tractor, sitting idle.

Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake

Needed: A tractor for seasonal work, with no budget to buy one outright.
Had, idle: A motor grader, sitting idle off-season.

$5,000 a month

Minto leased Niagara-on-the-Lake’s grader
$3,000 a month

Niagara-on-the-Lake leased Minto’s tractor

Both municipalities got the machine they were short of. Both turned a parked asset into monthly revenue. The grader Minto now runs would have cost more than half a million dollars to buy; it leases for roughly one percent of that a month.

Two ways in

You need a unit you cannot justify buying

Post what you need and the term you need it for. GruShare works the network for a municipality already holding that machine, then handles the contract, the inspection and the haul.

Post what you need (opens in a new tab) Browse what is listed (opens in a new tab)

You own a unit that sits idle

List it with its real availability windows. There is no fee to list, and GruShare earns only when the equipment is actually leased, so an unlisted asset costs you nothing but the months it spends parked.

List your equipment (opens in a new tab) See what is being asked for (opens in a new tab)

Three ways to get the machine

GruShare runs alongside GruMac’s core business rather than replacing it, which leaves a municipal client with a real choice rather than a single product.

Buy it

Right when the unit works most of the year. Rarely right when it does not.
Lease from GruMac

Ordered to your specification, outfitted before it arrives, and maintained where it lives. See the fleet.
Lease from a neighbour

Through GruShare, when the machine you need is already parked an hour away.