MOBILE welfare unit specialist Loc Hire is about to ramp up expansion plans with the opening of a new depot near Grantham, Lincolnshire.
The base, which is due to open on April 1, will be the firm’s fourth site in total, following the opening of premises in Aberdeen and Newcastle, as well as the head office in Bonnybridge, near Falkirk.
Founder and managing director, Dan Wharton, said the Grantham location makes strategic sense given the amount of business the company is now doing south of the border.
“Traditionally, depot networks have tended to be right in the centre,” Dan told Project Plant. “You get Glasgow and Edinburgh, then down to Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham. We’ve always tried to be slightly different in our approach to things. We’ve pulled ourselves away from that, without being too far away, so we’ve got a bit of a spine going down the east coast. We’re Aberdeen, Falkirk, Newcastle and Grantham. Each depot is within two-and-a-half to three hours of its nearest one. We’ve tried to keep them within a sensible distance from each other.
“When we opened Newcastle, we thought that a lot of our work would come in the north east. Actually what it did was open up the whole of England and Wales. At the moment the majority of our work is spread across the south of England – places like Dorset and Norwich. We’ve got a two-storey modular building on a long-term hire down in Loughborough, for example. The issue we had was being able to meet the operational expectations of our customers. We always wanted to expand but that has made this more of a priority.
“I’ve been really surprised at the commitment we’re getting from some of our customers up here who are willing and happy to work with us further down south.”
Dan said there are challenges and opportunities for any Scottish-based company looking to break into different markets, with Loc Hire currently benefiting from being ‘new kids on the block’ as far as the English sector is concerned.
“It’s difficult (establishing a business in a different market) from the point of view of understanding the territory,” Dan explained. “There’s a little bit of parochialism. At the moment our admin resource is all here (in Bonnybridge) for the whole of the business. But Grantham will have its own admin resource. To start with, six employees will be based there. They will take control of a hire desk, admin, invoicing, etc, for the whole of England and Wales. Here (Bonnybridge) will deal with the whole of Scotland.
“What we’re finding is that, like when we first started in Scotland four years ago, people want to deal with the new kids on the block. That gave us an in up here, added to that the quality of kit we had and the quality of service we offered. Up here we’re no longer the new kids on the block but down in England, it’s like starting again but with a structure we never had before. We’re able to offer that same thing, which is definitely working. There’s a shelf life for that but it definitely works in the beginning.”
Explaining the differences between the hire market in England compared with Scotland, Dan said, “What we’re finding so far is that it’s much more competitive but there’s a lot more work to go around.
“In Scotland I could probably name up to ten companies that do mobile welfare, but we probably compete head to head with two or three of them properly. Down south I think you could probably double that easily. There’s always room for people who offer better value, which is what we’ve always tried to do.
“We don’t profess to be the cheapest. We’re competitive but we’re not the cheapest. But we do absolutely have better quality kit than anyone else. My oldest unit is only four-years-old. That gives us a huge advantage, but that also links in to the biggest challenge for us. We have got to keep that personal touch. The biggest challenge for me is making sure we continue with the business where people really engage with our customers and care.”
With Loc Hire undergoing rapid expansion since its launch four years ago, Dan said the most challenging aspect has been to sustain the personal, family-friendly ethos which helped the firm to grow in the first place.
“It’s one of the hardest things,” he revealed. “In the beginning, that whole part of it was very easy and very straightforward. When I had to start employing people, it was people I knew and people who understand me and understood what I was trying to get across. Now when we recruit, we’re literally recruiting people we’ve never met before. And we’re doing it in remote locations. So that part of it is absolutely one of the biggest challenges because this business has been successful, not just because of the quality of the product, but actually more about the quality people, the quality service.
“People have got to buy into that and really believe it. If you’re just trying to tick a box, it only works in the short-term. Recruitment’s been tricky, but we’ve put a lot of time and effort into that and I think we’ve got the right people. It’s about getting experienced people in there, but people who actually understand and believe in what you’re trying to achieve.”
As well as the new Grantham location, Loc Hire’s Aberdeen base is relocating to near the new bypass to ease accessibility, while the Newcastle facility, which was once a satellite depot, is now a fully-fledged branch with four employees.
Dan highlighted recent innovations in mobile welfare, designed to bring about increased fuel savings for customers, aesthetic improvements and environmental benefits.
“One thing we’ve done, which is not really any massive benefit to our end-user, is we buy everything in stainless steel,” he added. “That gives us longevity in the product, which allows us to run the unit for longer. Aesthetically it’s better because we don’t have as much rusting and maintenance. That’s more an in-house feature.
“The big thing for us is we now buy all our units with a power on demand system, called Eco Ultimate. If you think about your kitchen, you’ve got a kettle, a heater, a microwave, etc. As you’re using each one, it stops the power going to something else. The fuel savings are significant.”
Dan explained that when running the units for 50 hours per week, fuel costs can be reduced from £50 or £60 down to just £5.
Looking to the future, while he’s open-minded about the prospect of opening even more depots, Dan said that isn’t the main focus right now. He feels the business is now set-up to deliver to customers in core parts of the country.
Dan also hopes Loc Hire will benefit from some of the major infrastructure projects taking place in England like HS2 – even if the firm is not directly providing units to those schemes. He explained, “We’re a business that is focused on expansion; we want to take the business as far as we possibly can. There are a number of ways to do that. You can do it by expanding your grasp on your immediate market, or you do it by opening up other branches and moving into new territories. We’re trying to do both. For us, when you look at contracts like HS2, what traditionally happens is the big guys will find those contracts take up all their stock and they leave this void. We’ve always been a business that’s focused predominantly on the small to medium-sized contracts. We’ve not really been attracted by the big tenders, which tend to be a race to the bottom anyway.”
