By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 21, 2026.
Your tools are inspected and ready, and the phone keeps ringing from the same handful of customers. Then pipe sticks on a well you've never worked, and the job goes to whatever yard that engineer rented from last time, before you ever got a shot at it.
New customers for oilfield rental tools come from being known before the job, by the two kinds of buyers who do most of the renting: operators and the service companies working on their wells. Get approved, learn who decides on each side, and put your name and your jobs where those people read between call-outs.
Called, Not Bid
The best seat in this business is first call. The customer phones you before anybody else, and nobody bids against you. Drilling Tools International, a rental tool company that reports publicly, shows how long that seat can last. Its 2025 annual report says it has supplied one of its largest customers under a first-call agreement since 2013, and the agreement has been extended through 2026.
Its sales force of 40 is split between city-sales and field-sales teams. That split is worth stealing even if you're a team of one. The engineers planning wells in town and the hands running them on location are two different audiences, and both have to know your name before the call. When you're the only rep, you can only stand in one of those places at a time. Your profile can stand in the other.
None of it starts until you're approved. Drilling Tools International holds more than 340 master service agreements and still describes getting them as hard and slow. The paperwork side has its own guide: how to get on an operator's approved vendor list.
Operators and Service Companies Each Rent About Half
So who actually rents the tools? The same report shows the company's 2025 revenue split almost down the middle: about 48% from operators such as Chevron, EOG, and Occidental, and about 48% from oilfield service companies such as Baker Hughes, Halliburton, and SLB. Its fleet is heaviest in the Permian.
That gives you two customer lists, and they read you differently:
- Operators. The engineer who plans the well and the people on location who run it. They want to know your tool works, shows up when you said it would, and won't wreck the budget on the well.
- Service companies. Their own people need a tool to finish their part of somebody else's well. They want a yard that picks up and has the tool, so their crew doesn't look bad in front of the operator.
It's easy to chase one list and forget the other. Write for both. One group to leave off your buyer list is the drilling contractor. Know those folks and treat them right, but the report says it's rare for a drilling contractor to rent tools for the operator.
The company's tools mostly rent by the day, with lost or damaged tools charged on top, and the billing questions a new customer brings to a first job get their own treatment in our guide to fishing tools in drilling.
Well Plans, AFEs, and New Tools
When EOG advertised a senior drilling engineer job in Midland in October 2025, the duties included well planning, writing AFEs, evaluating vendor performance, and applying new technologies, and our guide on what a drilling engineer does covers the rest of the role.
Three of those duties point straight at a rental rep. Show him how your tool ran on a well like his. Show him how your yard handles a bad day, because he's the one grading vendors. And give him something to read about a newer tool before he has to decide whether to put it in a well plan.
How Busy Your Customers Are
Baker Hughes counted 272 Permian rigs in the week ending October 16, 2026, 2 fewer than the week before, with the U.S. total flat at 603. A year earlier, Baker Hughes had 251 Permian rigs for the week to October 17, 2025, so the October 16, 2026 figure is 21 rigs, or about 8%, higher year over year.
Every one of those rigs has an operator behind it and service crews coming and going, and in any week somebody on one of them could need a tool from a yard they've never called. The basin-level version of this page is rental tools and fishing sales in the Permian Basin, and if the count turns the other way, read what to do when rental tools sit in the yard.
So the work is out there. The hard part is putting your own name on what you do, and I'll be straight with you about what comes with it. Speak up for yourself where customers can hear it, and once your name starts climbing, somebody will try to pull it back down. Expect it. The other choice is to stay like everyone else, and in rental tools, everyone else looks the same from the outside: same kind of fleet list, same promise to be there fast. A new customer who has never rented from you can't tell your yard from the next one, so he calls whoever he called last time. The jobs you've actually run, told under your own name, give him a reason to call you first.
The Warm Walk-In™ is built for exactly that. It puts your name and your jobs in front of operators and service companies before they need a tool, so when something sticks, yours is a name they already know.
When Technical Posts Weren't Enough
A rental rep's best material is the fishing job: what was stuck, what you ran, and what came out of the hole. A Permian founder we work with began with technical posts. By month three they were holding their own and no more, so we switched him to stories. LinkedIn's Social Selling Index places him among the top 1% of sales professionals in oil and gas. Read the full story.
Where a First-Call Agreement Beats Any Profile
If a customer already calls you first, guard that. For that customer's work, a first-call agreement beats any profile you'll ever build. The one Drilling Tools International holds with one of its largest customers has run since 2013, and no post outranks a customer who phones you before anybody else.
Your name earns its keep everywhere else: the operator who rents from a competitor, the service company that has never heard of you, and the new engineer inside your best account who wasn't around when that relationship started. If you're on the outside of an account that keeps calling the same yard, start with getting picked when an operator keeps calling the names it knows.
Get Your Bison Walk-Around
Pipe doesn't stick on a schedule, so be known before it does.
Send us your LinkedIn. We'll send back the Bison Walk-Around: five minutes of plain English on what's costing you callbacks and what we'd build. No call. No invoice. We give first.
Our rental tool and fishing page collects the rest of what we've written for reps who live on day rates and fishing jobs.
Sources and As-Of Dates
- Drilling Tools International Corp Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, as of December 31, 2025. Supports the first-call supply agreement in place since 2013 and extended through 2026, the sales force of 40 in city-sales and field-sales teams, the more than 340 master service agreements the company calls hard and slow to obtain, the roughly 48% and 48% revenue split between operators and service companies, the Permian-heavy fleet, daily rental fees with lost or damaged tool charges, and drilling contractors rarely renting for operators.
- EOG Resources careers: Senior Drilling Engineer, Midland, TX (Job ID 10871), posted October 29, 2025 and still listed October 18, 2026. Supports the duties listed for the role: well planning and design, AFEs, vendor performance, and new technologies.
- U.S. rig count had no change, is at 603 (Oil & Gas 360, reporting Baker Hughes), week ending October 16, 2026. Supports 272 Permian rigs, down 2 from the prior week, and the U.S. total of 603.
- Oil & Gas 360: U.S. rig count increased by 1 is at 548, week to October 17, 2025, compared with October 16, 2026. Supports the 251 Permian rigs a year earlier and the 21-rig, roughly 8% year-over-year rise.
- Proof, as of October 19, 2026. Supports the founder's month-three move from technical posts to stories and his top 1% Social Selling Index rank.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.