First, I must tell you I got into renting this machine by 'accident' and discovered how great it really is!

Background:

I organized a 'work day' at our church, with one of the jobs being cleaning the VERY dirty carpets.  We had two machines; one was my Hoover steam cleaner, and another machine the church owned.  About an hour into the job, the church's machine stopped working, so I ran over to Lowes and rented the Rug Doctor Wide Trac machine, since we had a LOT more work to do and I wanted to keep my volunteers working. 

First Impression:

I have rented Rug Doctor machines before when they were steel and aluminum machines.  The newer ones have a nylon (plastic) case and are much, much easier to lift and seem to have much simpler controls (I'm not as young/strong as I was when I rented these machines years ago).

Features:

As I suspected, the controls have gotten easier to use, as well as cleaning and refilling the tank.  The bottom tank, which holds the clean water/soap solution, can be filled with any 4 or 5-gallon bucket.  I recommend using the hottest water you can put into the bucket, and adding the soap solution after filling the bucket.  It will keep the solution from foaming up in your clean supply bucket before putting it into the machine. 

One of the rental machines has a switch to operate the heater for the water; some of the newer machines don't have this switch.  I recommend keeping it on if your rental machine has one. 

Next, the white bucket for catching the dirty water goes on top of the clean water container, and the vacuum hose goes on top.  Both are secured by the heavy wire clamp that keeps them in place.  It seems to be almost mistake-proof; if you put it on wrong, the clamp won't fit. 

The handle has a large lever on the side for adjusting the angle of the handle, or stowing it away when putting the machine in the trunk of your car.  VERY helpful; I'm 6'2", and some machines I have used seemed to be designed for someone about 5'5-5'9".  This adjustment makes it VERY easy to adjust to your height and comfort. 

So, here we go......

Operation:

When you turn the machine on, you can literally hear and feel the brush moving.  The shaking (vibration) is the cleaning brush moving back and forth. 

You pull one switch to spray the solution, and pull the machine backwards to clean the carpet.  In a second or two, you will see the cleaning solution going into the white bucket and will see it stop when you are out of the cleaning solution.

It is pretty basic; depending on how slowly you walk backwards, you can get about 15-20 minutes of usage out of each tank of solution before you need to empty the dirty water tank and start over. 

Results:

Holy cow! Remember I told you earlier we were using these machines on the carpet in our church building?  Well, that carpet was last cleaned a LONG, LONG time ago.  These machines got out dirt that didn't come out when the carpets were last cleaned by a professional cleaning company!  And, the results just blew away my Hoover carpet cleaner.  I can't stress enough how impressive the results were from these machines. 

In the classrooms, you could literally see colors in the multi-colored brown (1970's commercial) carpets on the clean side of the classroom that you couldn't see in the sides of the classroom that hadn't been cleaned.  I can't remember the last time the carpets looked this good!

Also, all of the food, tea and lemonaide spills and stains left there from months of church potlucks are now G-O-N-E. 

These machines were so impressive, I recently rented one to clean my 7-year-old home carpets with similar outstanding results. 

I've also discovered that going over the cleaned areas a second time with only water helps remove any residual soap solution, removes additional dirt, and seems to keep the carpets cleaner longer.  Yes, it takes some additional time, but the results are worth it to me.  I have also started putting a couple of ounces of Febreze in the rinse water to keep the smelling clean longer. 

Bottom Line:

I'm now seriously considering buying a Rug Doctor from their Web site.  Even though my Hoover Steam Cleaner still works, it can't come close to the results of the Rug Doctor Wide Trac.  Compared to the cost of renting a machine for a day, it would take about 26 rentals for the purchased machine to 'pay for itself.'  Not very cost-effective at all.  But, the drastic difference in results have just about convinced me to buy the machine, and not have to fool with the hassle of getting the rental back within the 24-hour rental window. 

Cost-savings:

First, the rental is WAY less expensive than a commercial company.  Second, if you want to save even more money, I used the Wal-Mart brand carpet cleaning solution vs. the Rug Doctor branded carpet shampoo, and saved almost half, with the results I listed earlier.  I don't know if the Rug Doctor brand soap would have worked any better, but I do know it would have cost more. 

I have also had good results using the machine on my car and truck's carpet and fabric upholstery, which is a huge savings over coin-operated carpet machines at a car wash or having the interior cleaned at a commercial car wash. 

Recommended: Yes