by Nick Drew | Tue 09 Sep 2014
Graceland’s re-visited
A couple of months ago I paid a visit to one of my old employers in the Hampshire area to catch up with some old friends at top civil engineering outfit Graceland’s for a potential Earthmover’s feature. Until I can bring you that feature here are a few shots from my visit, featuring a few familiar faces.
I have had a long association with Graceland’s over the years; it’s one of those firms that I hold in high regard for the opportunities they gave me, the way I was treated as an operator and the good run of work they offered me during my time with them, both as an operator and as an owner/operator. I think it’s fair to say that Graceland’s is more like a family business with many employees having been with them for many years. I was reunited with fellow machine operator Andy Hiscock on my first site visit in Eastleigh, Hampshire where he was operating a JCB JS130LC.
This came as a surprise to me as Graceland’s have always had a long association with Samsung, which naturally led on to see them buy Volvo machines for many years. They still have a good number of Volvo machines on the fleet of course, including this EC140DLC which was in action on the same job.
A number of smaller Volvo’s are also included in the fleet, like this ECR58Plus compact radius mini excavator seen in this shot being operated by Jeremy Amor. These are fantastic little machines for doing all the finishing works around the houses.
There are also a number of Hyundai R55-9 models on the fleet too, although this one doesn’t appear to have any Graceland’s signage on it as yet.
Finally in this post, on the day of my visit Graceland’s had a new Hitachi Zaxis 130-5 on demonstration which was being operated by Andy’s brother Tony Hiscock. Following a successful demo period Graceland’s have gone on to take delivery of at least one of these machines, which Tony has been very impressed with so far.
It was great to go back and see some of the lads again after all this time and I look forward to visiting again soon for another photo shoot.