The only way is Essex for GMP Plant Hire

by Nick Drew | Wed 24 Jun 2015

The only way is Essex for GMP Plant Hire

Ardleigh, Colchester based GMP Groundwork’s was founded in the early 1980’s by Gavin Poulter. In this blog post we will take a look at what makes the business tick, thanks to the family input.

Like many family businesses, GMP started from humble beginnings, but thanks to hard work by all involved, the company expanded steadily over the coming years. In the early days plant was hired in, but as the business grew Gavin saw the potential benefits of running their own machines and as such they started to invest their own kit.

One of the first machines on the firm was a New Holland backhoe loader, which was supplied by local dealership Ernest Doe. This machine was later joined by a number of Komatsu mini and midi excavators. More recently Hyundai machines were added to the fleet, including a 14 tonne class R145LCR-9 and a 21 tonne class R210-9. However Gavin had always had a hankering to start up his own plant hire company and last year he formed GMP Plant Hire with a vision to provide top quality, reliable kit to their customers. He has been joined in this venture by his two sons Aaron and Jay, both of whom had gained experience on the groundwork’s side of the business and his daughter Shanice. Of course behind every successful man, is an even more successful woman and in this case its Gavin’s wife Beverley, who according to Gavin has been instrumental in making it all happen.

Talking about their decision to branch out into the competitive plant hire sector, Aaron Poulter said, “With the groundwork’s side of the business we were finding that once we had done the major excavation work on the job, the kit was coming back to the yard and sitting idle, so we thought why not get it out on hire in the meantime. We then brought in Jason Taylor as business development manager to push the business on and find us a good client base, we set out targets to aim for, which we have now reached and in fact exceeded, so we are very happy with the way things have gone for us”. Jason brought with him experience of working in the construction industry and joined GMP straight off the back of a 2 year stretch working for Charles Wilson Engineers Ltd. Jason’s father was also a plant and machinery mechanic, so he has always been around the plant industry.

Essentially GMP Plant Hire as a stand-alone business only really kicked off around 6-7 months ago, but in that short period of time the company has amassed an impressive modern fleet of around 33 items of kit, ranging from 1 tonne dumpers up to 21 tonne hydraulic excavators and everything in between. The initial order with Ernest Doe was for 20 brand new machines, arming the business with a completely new fleet of quality, reliable and hassle free equipment as part of a 4 year plan. With the hire side of things just going up and up Jason Taylor predicted that the current fleet tally will probably increase over the coming year to around 60-70 items, which is impressive going by anyone’s standards.

The digger fleet comprises of New Holland mini excavators and Hyundai mini, midi and full size machines. Talking about the Hyundai models, Aaron Poulter said, “We find the Hyundai’s to be excellent value for money, you do get a lot of machine for your money and we find that the operators love them because they are so smooth to operate, have plenty of power and the cabs are so fully loaded they are just a great place to spend your working day in. The little New Holland’s like the E10 micro and E18SR models, have also been great machines, although they are a little bit more expensive than the Hyundai kit, they do stand-up well to the inevitable rigours of the self-drive market!”

Gavin Poulter added, “Having run Hyundai machines on our groundwork’s side of things and being aware of their reliability, I knew the machines would serve us well, so when we were looking for machines to add to the new hire fleet, it was really a no brainer!” New Thwaites dumpers were also included in the order but historically rates for these machines are often low compared to the financial outlay, as such in the future the firm is possibly looking at sourcing nearly new low houred models to supplement the fleet, with the occasional new machine included to make it more economically viable. Having said that the team look set to continue their allegiance to the Thwaites brand, Jay Poulter said, “Reliability once again is key to us, Thwaites is a long established market leader in the site dumper market and we offer a wide variety of sizes to keep all our customers happy”.

GMP Plant Hires compaction equipment fleet features a number of different brands, but the double drum roller fleet is dominated by Bomag. Having said that on the day of Earthmovers visit there were no rollers to be seen, Jason explained that in the majority of cases the rollers go out on hire and are not seen again for months on end, sounds like a great hire to me!

Small and tracked compact dumpers continue to be a big success for the company especially with customers like small builders and landscaping companies in addition to the larger contractors. With a wide range of hand tools and other items of plant GMP aim to be a one stop shop for a wide variety of clients. The business is very much, a hands on affair, with everyone pulling their weight and often going the extra mile to achieve the desired results. Summarising about this latest venture so far, Gavin Poulter said, “I am very proud of what we have achieved as a family”. From what I saw on the day of my visit, the only way is up for this Essex business.

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