Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Jon Langenfeld of Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. Please go ahead.
Jon Langenfeld - Robert W. Baird
Good morning, guys.
Brian Sondey
Good morning, Jon.
Jon Langenfeld - Robert W. Baird
Yes, I did some numbers, I guess first of all what was the average utilization during the quarter?
Brian Sondey
Let me just, it's probably right around 90% if you exclude, if we take all of the units including a new factory units.
Jon Langenfeld - Robert W. Baird
Yes.
Brian Sondey
It was around 88%, 88.1. If you exclude the new factory units what we call our core utilization is probably just over 90%.
Jon Langenfeld - Robert W. Baird
Okay, alright. And then when you talked about slowing, you have worked with your customer to slow the return of used containers, can you just talk a little bit about how you do that, I am assuming trying to somewhat better rates than looking at throughout the rest of their portfolio, can you provide some color on that?
Brian Sondey
I mean you are certainly right we are looking at couple of different tools to trying to do that or couple of different ways to offer customer's incentives to keep up. In general customers' trade volumes are down, so they have excess containers in their fleets. But for them it is also dropping-off containers involve some costs they have to truck the containers to our depot, we charge them for repairs and number of customers are fairly optimistic that their volumes may improve by the time this 2009 finishes.
And so for some customers we try to convince them that should be more cost effective, they will hold on to our containers than at least to drop them off and we can make it even more cost effective if we say lower the rates on the containers for a period of time. While we expect demand to be like.
For other customers you are just basically trying to get ahead of the competition, you say well, if you have to drop-off containers why do not you drop-off the other guy instead of us. And again the incentive there usually is either a period of time where fees will be lower or perhaps we extend existing units on hire on a long-term lease or may be convert short-term lease to a longer-term lease by offering rate reductions.
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