a wheelbarrow - nothing happens until you push it
‘‘
Business is like ’’ The Mervyn Lambert senior team - Sales Director Peter West, James Lambert and Mervyn himself.
LOOKING AFTER NUMBER 1
Mervyn Lambert Plant is a significant presence in the East Anglia region. If there is any doubt about that, the company even proclaims its predominance numerically. We travelled to Norfolk to find out more.
O
ne of the few downsides to reporting on the UK plant & tool hire industry is the
preponderance of workaday urban depot locations – even in the prettiest and most interesting towns and cities, your author often ends up on the local industrial estate. In markedly stark contrast, what a treat it was to drive through the verdant Thetford Forest and then wind up at one of the largest, most well stocked and certainly most rurally located hire businesses yet visited – Mervyn Lambert Plant.
Traffic light sales - another line for MLP
The company, named after its founder, has been in operation since 1969. Mervyn takes a bit more of a back seat nowadays, the torch largely passing to son James, who has continued to develop the
business and expand the equipment offering – the company has just become a Takeuchi dealership, for instance. Father and son take on the questioning, with Sales Director Peter West in attendance. How did it all begin?
“I left the family farm at 20 years old, with no qualifications but I knew how to operate machinery,” explains Mervyn. “I used to go dog racing on a Thursday, and a chap told me he was looking for people to help dig out old wartime railways. I ended up driving a Liebherr machine for seven hours a day, seven days a week, but I saved up £1115. In 1969 I bought a JCB 2 for £800. I worked hard and bought a few more, but I could never say no to a hire – whenever anyone wanted a machine, I bought a new one.
“I had four or five machines by 1982, and we were told we’d have ten years of growth in East Anglia. I decided that I’d borrow some money and go for it. Well, we didn’t quite get ten years, because the interest rates rocketed to over 14.5 percent in 1989.
I struggled with bankruptcy for three years. I renegotiated my finance and was only paying the interest on loans, but by 1991 the interest rates were coming back down and I knew I’d beaten it!”
The company hasn’t just survived financial hardships, but was well placed to thrive coming out of them. What do you put that down to?
“People have always complained about low rates and rate cutting in plant hire, but what I did was concentrate on service and back-up. I was never the cheapest but I wanted to be the best, and that’s why I put a number ‘1’ on all my machines. I like to think we are the biggest and the best, but perhaps we’re not the most modest!”
True enough, all Mervyn Lambert plant machines bear the singular digit – designed to look like an old-fashioned racing car number. “Everyone else can decide who is going to be number 2,” adds Mervyn, wryly.
16 Executive Hire News - May 2023
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