Cranes Raise the Bar

AGD Cranes is the UK's premier name in crawler cranes, their huge orange-liveried machines a familiar sight on motorway works and construction sites up and down the country. But there is far more to the company than mere crawler cranes. The company is the UK and Ireland distributors for IHI hydraulic crawler cranes, RTG leader rigs, Giken silent pilers, Mait foundation equipment, piling equipment from CZM, Fambo and THW and mini piling equipment from Vermeer.

AGD is a third generation, family run sales and rental company that operates from a sprawling 1.6 hectare site in Stratford-upon-Avon. This impressive facility includes a modern, fully-equipped workshop with a 25 tonne capacity overhead crane, fabrication shop, wash-bay with water recycling system plus a state-of-the-art paint-shop.

The company’s own workshops are supported by nearby Pirtek Redditch with which AGD has enjoyed a 13-year relationship. “We trust Pirtek Redditch and their ability to arrive on site with the right parts and manufacture what we need, there and then,” says AGD’s service manager Neil Ashton. “In this economic climate it is always possible to buy cheaper. But we can’t buy better.”

Ashton cites one recent example in which Pirtek Redditch’s responsiveness helped AGD secure an important crane sale. “We had a number of VIP visitors scheduled to arrive at 9.00 am to look at purchasing a crawler crane. We had run a full operating check before they arrived but when we started to put the machine through its paces, a hose failed,” Ashton recalls. “We called Pirtek and, although the MSST was only minutes away from another call, they diverted him onto our job because the visitors were due to fly out at 3.00 pm. The hose was replaced, the machine demonstrated and the sale was made.”

So did Neil Ashton feel guilty about diverting a Pirtek Redditch MSST away from someone else’s emergency call? “Not really,” he concludes. “I did ask how he managed to get here so quickly and he said he’d been called off another job at the last minute. But he also assured me that the customer was still dealt with in under an hour.”