We loan fertilizer spreaders to customers who buy our fertilizer. We have done this for over 30 years. It is appreciated by quite a few homeowners. They don't have to buy, store or repair the applicator that makes fertilizing their lawn simple.
We use to buy Ortho spreaders made by Republic. We paid about $20 each. They would last about two years even though they got a lot of abuse. These days we have to buy the Scotts brand fertilizer spreader.  I paid about $29. They are junk but they are easy to use junk. I bought 4 new ones yesterday and I doubt they will still be in use in May. Cheap lightweight plastic. Non-metal gears. It pains me to spend money on this stuff but my customers expect this convenience.
We use to number them. Spreader #1, 2, 3 etc. We would ask our customers to bring them back as soon as they were finished with them. Some would bring them right back. Others would return them within a week and well others would bring them back before the decade was finished.
A couple of years ago we started giving them names instead of numbers. We started off with Brittney, Paris, Madonna and moved on to George, Barrack, Mitt and Hillary. You know what. When we gave them names the customers were more responsible with them. We would ask them to please bring Hillary back soon and they would laugh and say " I'll get her back today". And they would. "Mitt has a 6 o'clock curfew"  He'd be back by 6. I didn't work today but I can't wait to see the new names our employees came up with.