Another youngster catches the digger bug

by Nick Drew | Mon 01 Dec 2014

Another youngster catches the digger bug

Following last week’s blog about young John Grainger, I was contacted by another youngster Robbie Buckley, who was keen to tell us about his plant & machinery exploits.

Robbie Buckley who is based in Kelso in the Scottish Borders was just 14 years old when he started hiring mini diggers from a local hire firm. His family have horses so there was plenty of work to do when they were building a new stable block, including digging foundations and spreading stone. After many months of hiring a digger Robbie came up with the idea of buying his own machine and hiring it out on an operated basis to friends and family.

Robbie said “I gave the idea some thought and started to look at diggers for sale, but it soon became clear that they would all be out of my price range, due to me still being at school and not earning any money!”

Robbie had a discussion with his mum about borrowing the money to pay for a digger and then paying it back as he earned money from his hire work, but sadly for Robbie his mum & dad were perhaps understandably not so keen on the idea. So Robbie thought about asking his grandad to buy him a digger.

Robbie said, “I told my grandad about the idea and he just said he would think about it, a few weeks went by and I never heard anything back from him. In the meantime I was still looking at diggers online and I kept sending grandad the links to try and spur him on into making a decision. Grandad told me I was better off buying one locally so I phoned a local hire company who told me they could sell me a JCB 8015”.

Robbie’s grandad secretly purchased the digger and it arrived on December 24^th last year. Robbie who by now was 15 years old, had arranged to do some work over the holiday period with a hired in mini excavator unaware that he would actually have his own machine. Armed with his own digger Robbie was able to do more jobs than ever, picking up more and more weekend work from family and friends and now nearly a year down the line he has never looked back.

Commenting on his little business Robbie said, "I’ve considered upgrading to a 3 ton machine but I think half the jobs I have done so far would not have been possible with the larger machine due to restricted access. To be honest the 1.5 tonne machine is ideal for me. I would love to one day have a tiltrotator fitted but having priced one I think it would cost more than grandad paid for the whole machine! I hope to carry on operating in the future and aspire to one day own my own groundwork’s company”. The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Robbie for getting in touch with us and sharing his mobile phone photos.

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