JCB secures £2m loadall order for plant hire business

STAFFORDSHIRE excavator manufacturer JCB has secured a £2m order from a Yorkshire plant hire business to supply a fleet of materials handling machines.

Leeds-based Chippindale Plant has placed the order as it takes advantage of the revival in the UK’s construction sector.

The company was founded in 1949 by the late Wilfred Chippindale, who set up a business from his home in Leeds with £100 of his savings, selling concrete and scaffolding. Today the business is still family owned, run by Wilfred’s grandsons Nigel and Peter Chippindale.

The company is one of the UK’s largest privately owned construction equipment hire and sales companies, employing 86 people and has other depots in Catterick, Huddersfield, Keighley, Newcastle, Sheffield and York.

The deal for the JCB machines includes the purchase of 50 Loadall telescopic handlers which are used for lifting and placing loads on building sites and which are all made at JCB’s Staffordshire factories. The machines are being bought through Sheffield-based JCB dealer TC Harrison JCB and delivery will be completed later this year.

A JCB spokesman said: “We are delighted to have won such a significant order from a customer who has been buying JCB’s machines for more than 60 years.”

Having weathered the downturn, Chippindale is now seeing growth in a number of industry sectors, and is expanding its fleet to meet increasing demand from customers across the North and the Midlands.

Joint Managing Director Nigel Chippindale said: “We rode out the recession with a combination of cut-backs, pay cuts and tough decisions, but we have come out stronger. Everyone took a pay cut but we managed to maintain and grow the business during the recession.

“We’ve had steady expansion and now operate from seven depots, from Newcastle to Sheffield. We have machines working from the Scottish Borders down to Derbyshire.
 
“The market is extremely busy at the moment, it’s the busiest that it’s been since before the recession. Mainly it is being led by housebuilders, but there is a general feel good factor in commercial building and civil engineering too.”

Chippindale now runs a fleet of 140 JCB Loadall telescopic handlers in a total plant fleet of more than 2,500 machines.