As well as being a leading agricultural contractor, Alfred J Vance & Sons provides a plant hire service to customers throughout the North-West. John Vance explains more about the busy Carrigans-based operation, which has been in business for nearly 60 years.
With a fleet of 40 tractors, Alfred J Vance & Sons is bigger than your average agri contractor. That’s because the family-run firm also specialises in plant hire. In fact, the plant hire end accounts for about 60 per cent of its overall business.
Now aged 74, Alfred J Vance has been in the farm contracting game since he was 16. He diversified into plant hire over 40 years ago when he began working for Donegal County Council. That relationship still stands today, while the OPW (Office of Public of Works), ESB and Irish Water, who Donegal County Council staff work on behalf of, also avail of his services, as do many businesses and private customers in the Donegal area.
The business employs six full-time staff, including Alfred’s sons John and Alan (he also has four daughters). Sadly, Alfred lost his beloved wife Maureen to illness earlier this year. Maureen had been a tremendous support to him and her family down through the years and is much missed by all who knew her.
Alfred J Vance & Sons provides a wide range of services to farmers in the region, include mowing, pit and baled silage, slurry spreading, lime spreading, ploughing, fertiliser spreading, hedge-cutting and excavation / drainage work.
Committed to providing a top-class service and complete customer satisfaction, the Vance family has a wide range of machinery to carry out your work quickly and efficiently, providing you with value-for-money and an alternative to investing in your own expensive equipment. Its success is down to the knowledge, skill and expertise of its staff, as well as the quality of its equipment. Alfred and his professional team deliver the value and quality farmers expect from their agricultural contracting partner.
As already stated, Alfred J Vance & Sons runs a large fleet of tractors which are a mixture of New Holland and older Ford models. The association with Ford goes back a long way as John notes: “Alfred started off mowing hay with a Ford Minor tractor before moving on to a Fordson Major tractor with a Ransome threshing mill and a Jones baler. As time progressed, he worked with three six-cylinder Fordson Majors spreading lime with Bredal lime spreaders. He bought his first new Bredal lime spreader, a B46, in 1971.
“He worked with a Ford 4000 and 5000 Pre-force forward, and onto a Ploughmaster 95, a Roadless 115, a County 1164 and a Muirhill 141. Initially he used a MK1 Kidd double-chop forage harvester and progressed onto a Taarup double-chop. He later worked with Ford 4600s, 6600s, 7600s, 6610s, 7610s, 7710s, 7810s, 8210s, TW15s, TW25s and TW30s. Nowadays, we run a wide range of New Holland tractors, including TS110s, TS115s, TM150s, TM155s, TM175s and 8360s.”
Other plant / equipment operated by the contractor include 10 diggers / teleporters, including New Holland B110B rubber wheeled and JCB 3CX; a John Deere 6750 forage harvester; a JCB 310S loading shovel; Kverneland mowers; two Hi Spec 2,500-gallon slurry tankers; a Claas round baler; Kverneland four-furrow and five-furrow reversible ploughs; Bredal lime spreaders; Red Rock silage trailers; hedge-cutting machine with Moffett saw head.
All machines are upgraded on a regular basis to avoid breakdowns and downtime. Servicing and maintenance is carried out in-house, while the bigger repair jobs are handled by Cowan Bros in Manorcunningham, who are main New Holland agricultural and construction dealers.
Between the agri contracting and plant hire work, Alfred J Vance & Sons are kept busy all-year round. As far as the agri contracting is concerned, the focus in the early months of the year is on lime spreading, slurry spreading and ploughing. They spread over 10,000 tonnes of lime per annum. The silage season gets underway in May and runs until September. This is a particularly hectic time for the Vances who take on part-time staff and work around the clock to keep their clients happy. When the silage is done with, it’s back to lime and slurry spreading as well as hedge-cutting.
“We’re not cutting as much silage as we used to because of the decline in young farmers. Most of our customers have been with us for years. We’ve been cutting silage and spreading lime for some of them for nearly 50 years,” John says.
The plant hire side of the business encompasses everything from water leak repairs to septic tank emptying / desludging, road works and general maintenance.
“We started working for Donegal County Council on a sub-contract basis in 1976 and have been with them ever since. We carry out such works as verge trimming, hedge-cutting and excavation. We also draw a lot of sewerage from private dwellings into the new Letterkenny WWTP & Sludge Centre which is operated by Severn Trent Response on behalf of Donegal County Council. We can have up to 20 tractors dedicated to the Council at any one time,” John continues.
“For Council work, we cover all of Donegal so we have a wide catchment area in that regard. For the agricultural work, we cover within a 50-mile radius of Carrigans. We’re only five miles from the Derry border and we do a lot of lime spreading in Northern Ireland. We’ll go wherever the work is.
“We take great pride in the quality of our work and machinery. We quote competitive prices on a wide range of jobs and are very appreciative of the support and loyalty of our clients.”
Alfred J Vance & Sons are members of PAC (Professional Agricultural Contractors of Ireland), which represents the interest of agri contractors at local, national and European level as well as on Government agency and NGO committees.
For all your agriculture contracting / plant hire requirements, look no further than Alfred J Vance & Sons.
On another note, Alfred J Vance is also the treasurer of Donegal Vintage Club which will be holding its 38th Annual Vintage Rally on Saturday, August 19 at Drumbarnett, Manorcunningham. He has a keen interest in vintage machinery. Alfred was involved in organising the 32-County Bale Challenge which was held on June 3 last on Ian Witherow’s farm at Grianan Estate, Burt, to help raise money for various cancer charities. In the near future, there is the Blackbridge Tractor Pulling Event on Saturday, September 9 in Burt to raise funds for worthy charities and Alfred is eager to attend this event. Finally, in memory of Alfred’s late wife, Maureen, the family organised a Tractor Road Run on Saturday, April 8 last to raise funds for Donegal Hospice. It was a really good day and it was greatly supported with over 160 tractors attending and raising €7,250.
Alfred J Vance & Sons.
Cross,
Carrigans,
Lifford,
Co. Donegal.
Telephone: 074 9140103
Mobile: 087 2628258 / 086 8331088
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 5 No 6, September 2017
