‘‘ H
My biggest asset is not
my degrees or experience, but my work ethic
’’
alt Hire, like many independent plant & tool hire companies, resides on a
workaday industrial estate. Look beyond the unglamorous Stockton-On-Tees location, however, and there’s a lot more to discover. For MD Simon Whitfield, the journey from college leaver to successful business owner has not been entirely straightforward, flourishing in one career, before personal and professional connections sent him on other trajectories and back again. The man himself is affable in person, picking up the story from the very outset.
“British Gypsum was my first proper job after leaving college,” he begins. “I was a sales merchandiser, initially, working my way up, then one of the people who had the biggest influence on my career, Dave Williams, went to Vp plc. He asked if I’d go to work for UK Forks, which was one of the first to provide telescopic handlers in the UK – I was national business development manager, with a brief to focus on the housebuilding market.
“I was at UK Forks for two years, give or take, then around ’99 Vp was selling the onshore part of Airpac Bukom to focus on
Halt Hire Managing Director, Simon Whitfield. THE BOSS MAN Simon Whitfield walks the walk, as far as major brands and customer
service are concerned. So why is this former Vp manager now going it alone, and is it quite as rewarding? We find out…
offshore business, and an opportunity came up to be national sales manager. This allowed me to cut my teeth in managing people rather than accounts. I then went back to British Gypsum for a period, with a much larger team of ten, before I returned to Vp to work as regional sales manager for Hire Station. I later became regional sales director.
I was there for four and half years, while completing a business management degree and MBA. The final turning point came in Los Angeles, bizarrely while watching a shark attacking a seal out to sea. I got talking with this tanned Californian, who it turned was 62 but looked a lot younger. He said he’d had his own business and sold it, and now he was living on the beach, content with just being himself. I asked him what the secret was, and he told me that you’d never be happy and rich working for other people. I had no reason to leave Vp, but I took the decision in December 2015 to join Arco. I didn’t want to relocate, but the commute between Teesside and Hull was too punishing. This was all the impetus I needed to start my own business.”
That’s quite a story. How did the name come about?
“In October of 2016 I incorporated ‘Heating, Access, Lighting and Tools’ as a business. That was a bit of mouthful, but it was a decent acronym – Halt Hire.”
How quickly did the business develop from there?
“I wrote a business plan and presented it to the bank in November 2016. They must have liked what they saw, because we quickly moved onto the facets needed to build a business – invoicing, asset finance and so on.
I borrowed £120,000 in February 2017 and invested it in kit that I knew would be in demand. Our focus is very much on being a family company providing a service that you just don’t get from the nationals. They probably aren’t going to come in at 4.30am to supply a customer with a generator. Fear of failure is a great driver – there’s nobody else paying you for a month’s work, so you’ve got to be very careful how much you give yourself.
14 Executive Hire News - June 2022
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