The Coeur d'Alene branch of Baton Rouge, La.-based H&E Equipment Services Inc. plans to move around the end of this year to a larger building being developed in Post Falls, says Ken Nelson, branch manager.

H&E Equipment will lease the 12,000-square-foot building and the roughly 3.5-acre site at the corner of state Route 41 and 16th Avenue, where construction began recently, Nelson says. The building is expected to be completed by Nov. 1, and the branch should be fully relocated there by Dec. 31, he says.

The company rents, sells, and services equipment used in the construction, mining, and other industries. The main reason for the move is that the branch has been growing and is out of space at its current, 7,000-square-foot facility, located on an about 2.2-acre site at 1212 W. Appleway in Coeur d'Alene, Nelson says.

"The new facility also will have a large overhead crane so we can take on additional service work, which we couldn't do here," he says.

Ocean West Nevada Corp., based in the Phoenix area, is developing and will own the building. An Ocean West offshoot, GP West Construction, is serving as general contractor, but is subcontracting all of the work locally, he says. City of Post Falls building permit documents put the value of the construction project at $845,000.

The Coeur d'Alene branch of H&E Equipment employs 14 people, all full time, and serves the entire Inland Northwest, Nelson says. It rents a lot of equipment, including aerial material-handling equipment such as forklifts, scissor lifts, and boom lifts, along with excavators and other heavy equipment used in general construction and mining, he says. It also sells new and used equipment, and offers a parts and service department, the latter including two service trucks for use at customers' locations, as well as some equipment for safety training, he says.

The branch has added two employees in recent months, and likely will need to add more once it moves to the new, larger location, Nelson says.

Founded in 1961, H&E Equipment has branches across the country and claims on its website to be one of the biggest integrated equipment dealers in the nation. It ranked eighth in size in industry publication Rental Equipment Register's 2012 list of the 100 largest rental equipment companies, with $288.6 million in rental volume.

It claims to be the largest dealer in the world for Manitowoc and Grove Crane products and one of the biggest Komatsu earth-moving equipment dealers in the U.S. It also is an authorized dealer for equipment manufactured under the Bobcat, Doosan, Gehl, Genie, and JLG brands, among others, it says.