All About the Earth

Taking another a look back at a story I wrote in 2015 which first appeared in Earthmovers Magazine.

Like so many in the earthmoving plant & machinery sector, Steve Wormell originally came from an agricultural background. I travelled to Essex to catch up with the man and some of his machines out on sites.

Steve grew up on his father’s farm in Colchester and was naturally surrounded by machinery from a very young age. In many ways agriculture and earthmoving are very similar as a lot depends on the way you work with and manage the earth, as such it is often common place to see members of the farming community diversify into the plant hire and earthmoving industries.

Over the years its virtually become a tradition to see a Wormell machine at the annual Doe Show event.

In his youth Steve used to help out on the family farm, but had ambitions to set up a plant hire business. In 1979 Wormell Plant came to fruition when Steve purchased his first machine, a second hand Komatsu D30S tracked loading shovel complete with a 4 in 1 bucket and an unusual John Deere back actor, which could be removed if needed. Steve recalls that this machine, which he had purchased from a local plant hire firm, was fitted with a manual gearbox, which greatly reduced track wear and featured an opened back cab. This machine was followed by an International B100 tracked loader, which somewhat surprisingly featured a standard bucket and no cab. Sometime later Steve added his first hydraulic excavator to his fledgling fleet, a JCB 6C, which he purchased for the princely sum of £1900 from Ernest Doe.

An example of Steve Wormell's first excavator a JCB 6C now lying at rest in Kent;  Photo Courtesy of Chris Griffin.

Now, nearly 36 years later, the company has evolved and expanded to become a big player in the plant hire sector in Essex and the surrounding area. However, the farm still plays a big part in the Wormell family’s life, with Steve’s son now heavily involved in the day to day running of it, which allows Steve to focus on the plant hire side of things along with his right hand man, Plant Manager John Hamblion.

John, who has worked for Wormell Plant for 9 years, told me more about the business, “We currently employ 35 members of staff, which mainly consist of operators and fitters, who are based in our own workshop and out on the road in the service vans. Our current fleet total is 40 machines, of which 25 are Hyundai wheeled and tracked excavators ranging in size from 6 tonne up to 32 tonne. In addition to the excavators, we also run small 3 tonne Hitachi mini excavators, JCB 3CX’s, 25 & 30 tonne articulated dumptrucks from Bell and Volvo, dozers from Caterpillar and Komatsu and a wide and ever expanding range of attachments including hammers, concrete munchers, hydraulic tilt buckets and riddling buckets to name a few”.

The company has invested heavily in its fleet, which is necessary to enable them to offer its customers the very latest machines available, in terms of eco-friendly engines, safety features and the latest cutting edge technology which is demanded on today’s competitive job sites.

All of Wormell Plant’s work is hire, either on an operated or self-drive basis, with customers including groundworker’s, civil engineering firms, earthworks contractors, aggregate pits, down to small builders.

Talking about the company’s desire to please its customers John said, “If the phone rings and a customer want’s something specific we try and deal with it, on occasions a customer might request a machine or attachment that we don’t have available, at that point we would consider purchasing that piece of kit to satisfy that customer, it’s all part of the service we pride ourselves in”.

Wormell Plant rank among some of the very earliest Hyundai customers for Ernest Doe. The first machine they purchased was a Robex 130LC model and since those early days the company has gone on to purchase over 50 of the Korean built excavators.

Wormell Plant’s long term association with Hyundai excavators is thanks in part to Steve’s excellent working relationship with Ernest Doe, which goes back some 30 years on the agricultural and construction side of the business. Steve makes a special mention about his relationship with Doe’s Area Sales Manager Andy Parnham and the first class back up they get from Ernest Does Workshop Manager David Woods.

Plant Manager John Hamblion was also keen to heap praise on the back up saying, “If we ever have a problem we can speak to David and as Doe’s are very local to us we can even go to the depot and David will show us the schematics on his computer and talk us through how to solve any issues, which in all fairness are few and far between, but it’s great to know that support is there if we need it. For us like any plant hire business, it’s important not to have any downtime as any hour down is an hour lost in terms of hire rate, so it’s crucial that the kit keeps working all of the time”.

Wormell Plant has found the Hyundai kit to be very reliable, mechanically sound, and above all extremely competitive on price.  John was keen to take me out to see some of their kit in action on sites in the local area.

Earthmovers first port of call was to see a couple of articulated dumptrucks at work at Martell's Quarry Landfill Site, Ardleigh, Nr Colchester, a site that takes vast quantities of rubbish from London. On this job Wormell Plant had a Volvo A30D and Bell B30D 30 tonne trucks in action hauling capping material, which was being spread by a Cat 963C tracked loading shovel.

Our next visit was to see one of Wormell Plant’s 21 tonne class excavators a R210LC-9 model. This machine was working in some extremely sticky and challenging material on the site of the new Colchester Park & Ride. Work started on this project in January 2014, and the works involved construction of a terminus building, a car park to hold 1000 cars and creating an access to the park & ride from junction 28 of the A12. The facility is due to open at the end of March and Wormell’s Hyundai was busy shaping up the surround banks ahead of landscapers who will put the finishing touches to it.

You can’t travel far in Essex without coming across machines bearing Wormell’s unique and effective livery, which features a worm wearing a black hard hat and red vest, which I feel is a fantastic stroke of marketing genius! The idea for the worm logo was a local sign writer who simply said, with a name like that I am sure we can come up with something and the logo has remained a fixture ever since. One of their latest machines, an R140LC-9A, was featured on the construction stand at the Doe Show, in fact it’s almost become a tradition to see a Wormell machine at the annual event.

We headed back towards Chelmsford and called into a site in Witham, where one of Wormell’s R145LCR-9A compact radius Hyundai’s was working on self-drive hire to Anderson Construction, who were working on a Taylor Wimpey housing site.

Saving the best till last we visited the pride of the Wormell fleet, a nearly new Hyundai R300LC-9A, which was working on a site in the centre of Chelmsford not a stone’s throw away from the Riverside Ice Rink, where they were building a new £64m shopping complex. Wormell’s big 30 tonne class excavator was busy feeding material into a Terex Finlay J-1170 crusher to provide re-useable material for the construction process.

It was clear to see that Wormell Plant are devoted Hyundai users, with the brand working well for them and their customers, and they continue to be so to this day.