Stockholders of United Rentals Inc and RSC Holdings Inc will vote at separate special meetings on 27 April on an agreement to merge the two major equipment rental firms.

Subject to stockholder approvals and satisfaction of certain other closing conditions, both entities anticipate completion of the proposed transaction on 30 April.

Together, the firms will have almost 1,000 branches, more than 12,000 employees and equipment with an original cost of almost USD7 billion. The equipment includes numerous forklifts, about 110,000 aerial work platforms and thousands of rental categories.

On 15 December, United Rentals entered into a definitive merger agreement with RSC. United agreed to acquire RSC in a cash-and-stock transaction that ascribed a total enterprise value of USD4.2 billion to RSC.

United says the deal may aid growth and lead to more than USD200 million in cost savings.

"(After the closing), we will move immediately into integration," says Michael Kneeland, chief executive officer of Greenwich-based United. "This is a moment . . . that we've been planning for four months. It's been a very intense process, and a lot of work, a lot of heavy lifting, has been ongoing ever since we made the announcement" in December.

"One of the areas the two companies can really help each other . . . is on safety - to achieve a zero recordable rate in our safety performance," Kneeland said in a company-wide conference call.

Technically, the combination of United Rentals and Scottsdale, Arizona-based RSC "is an acquisition, but the way in which we are approaching it is similarly (to) what we've done with our other acquisitions in merging two companies together," Kneeland said. "Looking at the best processes and the best people so that . . . one and one are more than two."

The combination raises concerns about possible staff lay-offs.

"If you look at the entire landscape of United Rentals and RSC combined, we're going to take out less than 10% of the headcount of the entire combined organisation," says Matt Flannery, United's executive vice president of operations and sales.

"In the instance where we may merge a branch - there are some instances where we literally have branches across the street - if we pick one of those facilities and house both, we can merge those branches. That doesn't mean a large loss of employees. The real estate cost alone is a huge help to our synergies. But I don't want to say that we won't lose any employees."

"(The combination) won't change the way that we'll look at our business metrics and our service metrics than we would have as a standalone company," Flannery reports. "When business is real slow, we've got to look at, unfortunately, layoffs. We used to have to do a lot of that back in the end of 2008 and 2009. We haven't had to do much of that in a while."

"We've got a big, huge year ahead of us," Kneeland says. In annual investment, "we're looking at USD1 billion - USD1 billion - of fleet. That's a phenomenal amount of money, and the eyes of the world will be watching us as will our competitors around every corner to see that we make a success out of RSC and United."

For the first quarter ended 31 March, United's sales of rental equipment increased 137.5% - to roughly USD76 million - compared to USD32 million in the same 2011 period. United says it sold a larger proportion of equipment with high original equipment cost - on average more than USD 30,000 per unit - "in particular, forklifts and earthmoving equipment, which resulted in increased revenue".

United reports profit of USD13 million on the quarter's sales of USD656 million versus the comparable 2011 loss of USD20 million on sales of USD523 million.

United's costs relating to the merger were reported as USD10 million.