Advance Tool Hire & Sales - Profile


The Advance Tool Hire shop, briefly quiet after the morning rush.


and it still hasn’t quite caught up to pre- pandemic levels. At the same time, many hirers enjoyed something of a lockdown ‘bubble’, with a lot of people on furlough tackling gardening, building and household projects. I can see potential upsides and downsides, but how was it for you?


“It’s not nice to say, but lockdown was the best thing that happened to us as a business – trading improved by around 30% and it has remained at that level ever since.”


Well, that’s nothing to feel guilty about – and many other hirers seem to have enjoyed similar uplifts. Getting back to the fleet, the company offers a much broader range than micro diggers. What else are you doing well in at the moment?


“The digger business is going well, but sometimes you look at other equipment and it starts taking off. This is what happened with scissor lifts, which go particularly well with our shopfitting customers. So, we now have scissor lifts and cherrypickers from Pop-up, Genie and Star10 mast booms from Haulotte, as well alumnium towers and we’re doing quite a lot of stair scaffolds at the moment,” says Liam.


“One of the areas we’re starting to move into is shredders. We’ve had Tracmasters and Eliet woodchippers in the fleet, but we’ve been looking at larger machinery from companies such as Först. I’m also looking to


While tool hire keeps him busy, Jason is also a keen Lambretta enthusiast.


buy a new platform from Nifty – the first one we got nicked on the first hire, and we never saw it again!”


What about cordless equipment – is there much of that in the fleet?


“We’re always hiring out cordless circular saws, drills and other smaller power tools, from brands like Makita and Bosch. We had a Bobcat battery digger on crosshire, but electric excavators are so expensive, they often can’t do as much work and we don’t have any others in the fleet at the moment. However, clients such as Nottingham City Homes, are mostly looking to hire cordless equipment nowadays.”


Mindful of your regular clientele, do you get much in the way of unusual or particularly successful hires?


“Something that turned into a great job for us was Herace-type fencing for a local hospital. They wanted soundproofing as well, which was something we hadn’t done before, and this has turned into something new for us.”


Aside from the hire and sales of equipment, do you have time left for personal interests as well?


“I play tennis and I’m into property now, so I just come here in the mornings, working with the lads and discussing the day’s trading,” says Liam. “Luke and Jason mostly run the


business now, so the future of the company really lies with them.”


“I have a passion for Lambretta scooters,” adds Jason, who indeed has a painting of ‘Modfather’ Paul Weller on the wall next to his desk. “I specialise in finding old machines and renovating them, and I have a couple of frames on go upstairs right now.”


Lastly, what about the plans for the company going forwards?


“We’re looking to get new larger premises, as we’re literally growing out of this depot. We do have another unit on the same estate, which we mainly use for storage. However, we’d like to get everything under one roof,” says Jason.


“We’re just under 9,000 square feet here, and we’d prefer to stay in this area, near central Nottingham. We nearly got a 25,000 square foot unit, but the other chap pulled out. However, we’d move out tomorrow if we could!”


And that seemed like as good a place as any to conclude the meeting. My thanks to Liam, Jason and Luke for a warm welcome and their time. It is not only my intention to cover hire companies close to my house – this was only a couple of miles away – but a real pleasure to find such a neat, well- stocked and plainly successful depot virtually on my doorstep. n


Whacker plates are no longer in short supply, it seems.


Advance also does well in powered and non-powered access equipment.


September 2023 - Executive Hire News 43


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