MAKING IT HAPPEN
Eagle Plant Hire is rightly regarded North of the Border. With the company expanding its services and eyeing a larger premises, business is plainly thriving. We caught a chat with the senior team.
I
f Eagle Hire has ‘humble beginnings’, as its website proclaims, the present company is
anything but – the team running the show nowadays has transformed the business; adding new depots and services, growing its customer base and radically improving its financial position in the process.
The Eagle estate currently comprises an outpost in Loanhead near Edinburgh, a specialist site survey and safety division in the Baillieston suburb of Glasgow and its headquarters in a small industrial estate to the east of the city. With blue chip clients in utilities, demolition and construction, and business continuing to boom, the company is currently exploring a new location within the Central Belt that offers the potential for further growth – and a good chance of realising an ambitious financial target.
The Eagle story begins with two Martin Plant fitters, George Deacon and John McGinn, who formed the company in the late 1980s as a small plant and tool hire operation. Present MD Colin Inglis and his brother Alan
acquired the business around 2004, then Colin and and wife Claire became the sole owners in 2016 after buying out brother Alan, with the aim to significantly develop the company. Fellow directors Iain MacDonald, John Cummings and Douglas Smeaton – all Nationals alumni – came on board in 2018. Things have apparently moved at pace since…
L-R: Director Iain MacDonald and Sales Director Douglas Smeaton.
“The difference between the two companies is like night and day,” explains Sales Director Douglas Smeaton. “Our reputation has grown substantially in the Central Belt, and in the last five years we have grown our turnover by five-fold.
“Another reason for our success is that we are an independent company – much less
bureaucratic in our processes and I think our clients would say that we’re much easier to deal with.”
The majority of your customers are in utilities, construction and housebuilding sectors. What have been the advantages of working in these sectors?
“As a result of winning and attracting more national accounts, other similar businesses have come on board. This has led to the development of our utilities service based at this depot. We used to have to cross hire much of this equipment at great expense, so this has resulted in a substantial saving.”
It's interesting to note that you go a little bit larger on your excavators. What's in your plant fleet?
In spite of outgrowing its current premises, Eagle keeps everything in good order.
“We have well over 100 excavators, which is always being added to, mainly Kubota and Wacker Neuson machines from micros to eight tonnes. The eight tonne machines are always on hire, probably breaching 85-90%
22 Executive Hire News - January/February 2023
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