It offers general, aerial, and specialty rentals to a customer base that includes construction and industrial companies; utilities; municipalities; and homeowners.

[13] In December 1997, three months after forming, United Rentals began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol URI.

[14] On December 26, 2006, United Rentals announced the sale of their Highway Technology division to HTS Acquisition, Inc.[15] On July 23, 2007, United Rentals announced a definitive agreement to sell itself to Cerberus Capital Management in a transaction valued at approximately $6.6 billion, including the assumption of approximately $2.6 billion in debt obligations.

[16] On November 15, 2007, the company announced that Cerberus was not prepared to proceed with the purchase on the terms set forth in its merger agreement.

Cerberus confirmed that there had not been a material adverse change at United Rentals, which would have let it bow out of the deal without penalty.

[17] On December 21, 2007, a Delaware Chancery Court ruling denied United Rentals' attempt to force Cerberus to follow through on the takeover bid.

[28] On August 22, 2017, United Rentals announced it had acquired all power generation assets, primarily mobile generator sets, from Cummins Inc. To maintain fleet and customer service continuity, a small number of Cummins employees joined United Rentals.

On July 2, 2018, United Rentals announced it had agreed to purchase BakerCorp International for about $715 million in cash, enhancing its Pump Solutions division.

United Rentals' board of directors unanimously approved the deal to purchase BlueLine from Platinum Equity for about $2.1 billion in cash.

BlueLine has 114 locations in 25 US states, Canada, and Puerto Rico, and approximately 46,000 rental assets marketed primarily to mid-sized and local accounts.