Thwaites dumper sales success for new dealer

Recently appointed Thwaites dealer Shell Plant has made another significant sale, this time to rapidly expanding East Anglia-based rental company Target Plant & Sales. Appointed last September, Shell Plant has already sold more than 100 Thwaites dumpers, exceeding even its own optimistic forecasts.

The latest 18 machine order is to Target Plant which is expanding its 60 strong dumper fleet. The new machines are a mixture of Thwaites Alldrive front tip, high tip, swivel and high tip swivel machines with capacities ranging from one tonne to nine tonnes.

“Although we currently have a mixed site dumper hire fleet, we have decided that because of their performance, quality and residuals, we will only purchase Thwaites machines in the future both for fleet expansion and replacement of existing dumpers,” said Target Plant hire manager Simon Braby.

“We have recently opened a new ‘plant’ depot in Stowmarket, Suffolk adjacent to the A14. The depot is ideally situated to take advantage of the A14 corridor and is a perfect base for us to hire out the new site dumpers, excavators and compaction equipment and to service our customers’ needs. Most of the new Thwaites dumpers will operate from that depot and we will be looking to add further new machine packages – including dumpers – probably in the Spring.”

Target Plant was formed in 1981by Chris & Pam Braby and operated from small premises in Colchester. Over the years the business has grown considerably. In 2005 the company relocated it’s head office to large premises on Severalls Business Park in Colchester. It now has three depots - Colchester head office, Ipswich and now Stowmarket - covering the South East of the England, expanding into heavier plant and non mechanical rental including some access equipment. The rental company is currently very busy and extremely positive about the future.

“In previous years we would purchase machines in small numbers – two’s or three’s – but now we are confident to buy in larger packages,” said Braby. “At the same time as the 18 dumpers we ordered 10 new five and eight tonne excavators. Dumpers and excavators are a common hire combination with eight tonne mini excavators regularly going out with six and nine tonne dumpers. Also very popular are the one and 1.5 tonne high tip swivel dumpers for working on tight and confined space sites.”

Celebrating its 40^th year in construction plant sales this year, Shell Plant was appointed Thwaites dealer last August and has been very pleased with the sales activity over the past six months.

“We have been involved with site dumpers for many years initially distributing Winget and then Barford and Ausa,” said partner Julian Payne. “However we were very pleased to add Thwaites to our new sales portfolio as it is the market leading brand in that sector with excellent design, build quality and performance. Dumper sales over the past six months have been excellent!”

With one ‘super depot’ in Earls Barton, Northamptonshire the company covers the local counties of as far as North London and Norfolk although for Thwaites it is Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Buckinghamshire.

Like Target Plant, Shell Plant is experiencing strong demand for all of its new equipment franchises and is taking on additional staff to cope with the increased activity. “Generally there is a lot of interest in all Thwaites models but if I had to pick the most popular they would be the three, six and nine tonne straight and swivel-skip models,” said Payne.

Thwaites manufactures the world's widest range of four wheel drive site dumpers which is renowned throughout the industry for high performance levels, durability and low operating costs which in turn guarantees high resale values. The company has been producing dumpers since 1951 and continues to build an enviable reputation for innovation resulting from advanced design, utilising the very latest production techniques.