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“In any rental business, the most important asset is people,” says Ron Chilton. This partly explains why he founded NTS in 2004 with five other managers from rental company NES Rental.

Mr Chilton has a simple philosophy for staffing; “hire slow and fire fast. We have no time to turn people around.” The company seeks employees from “the ones who can't fit into the corporate scene. Our people are around ditch diggers. We have no need for khaki trousers and tasselled loafers here.”

Shared ownership is another NTS mantra. All key managers have a stake in the company. Mr Chilton says this means that “when talking to a branch manager, he [knows he's] talking to a partner.”

Maintaining a positive outlook is another unwritten rule; “I like to spend time finding people doing things right, not wrong,” says Mr Chilton.