T & E Dunne Plant Hire in Co Laois has developed a glowing reputation for providing its clientele with an excellent service. Tom Dunne told Irish Tractor & Agri all about this family company which is fast-approaching a decade since first setting up in the O’Moore County.
It seems there has been no let up for T & E Dunne Plant Hire in 2018 and all signs point to that continuing right through into the New Year, with business still booming at the moment out Mountrath way.
By starting up on his own a little over eight years ago, Tom Dunne was very much following in the footsteps of his father and mother. The Plant Hire business is something the Dunne family has been immersed in for two generations now and the reputation for carrying out work which is top of the line is as strong as it has ever been.
Tom will accredit a lot of that to his father and mother of course, having started his venture from the ground up back in the 1980s, but there can be no denying that T & E Dunne Plant Hire is living up to the high standards originally set by the first generation.
Irish Tractor & Agri learned all about the thriving business from Tom Dunne, who was good enough to take time from what has become an increasingly hectic schedule.
“We’re in Coolnacart, Mountrath, Co Laois and my father would have first started up in the early 1980s,” explained Tom.
“I took over in 2010. I’d have been working with machinery all my life, had built up the experience and, in 2010, T & E Dunne Plant Hire was started up.
“My brother Anthony is here full time and in busy times we’d take on more men but, most of the time, it’s me and him here.”
Together the two brothers run a tight ship, with hedge cutting, mulching and sawing with the excavator, turf cutting, land drainage, gravel mole drainage and general site work featuring prominently in the repertoire of services.
“With the services we offer, we’re basically busy all year round here,” Tom pointed out.
“We’d do a lot of hedge cutting and have rock breakers here as well. The work often comes in spasms for us and it means that you’d really need two of every machine here.”
Dealing with a pile of work at one time is often tricky and it’s why Tom keeps local with much of business, while also hiring men that he can trust to carry out a good job for clients.
Tom’s wife Elaine looks after all the paperwork and administration and as Tom himself says: “Is the backbone of the business.”
He confirmed that 2018 in particular has been an easier assignment thanks to the ground being much drier than in previous recent years.
“It certainly has been easier to work this year more than others. Overall the ground conditions have been very good, I have to say,” Tom remarked.
“You’d always want to be cutting turf in early April. The earlier you get out, the better and you can move on to the next thing then without delay, so that’s what we aim for here.”
Of course having all the proper equipment helps too and at T & E Dunne Plant Hire they endeavour to leave no stone unturned.
For Tom, the impressive machinery fleet which his company boasts is a key part of the reason why clients continue to come back to them time and time again ahead of other competitors out there.
“We’d be buying our machinery from Gaynor Plant in Roscommon. He gives a good service and I tend to stick with Hitachi all the time,” he said.
“I’ve two mini diggers here and mainly John Deere tractors. I’ve two low-loaders, five John Deeres and a New Holland 8560.
“I never saw the point in going with new brand new tractors. It’s much more costly and we do all the repairs on our machines here ourselves anyway.”
Looking after their own machines certainly has its advantages for the Dunnes, as does getting repeat business from their customers.
It’s business that has certainly been earned down through the years – dating back to the time when the Dunne family first started up their business venture close to 35 years ago.
Since that time, T & E Dunne Plant Hire has been established, grown and carried on the good work.
According to Tom himself, the secret to his company’s success comes down to looking after clientele as best they can each and every time.
“It’s all local farmers that we work with. We do the work as best we can for them and we always make sure that the farmers are happy,” he stated.
“As I said, we do a good bit of hedge cutting, mulching, sawing and we have a Komatsu D65 bulldozer there as well. Anthony is nearly on the mulching full time for us here at this stage.”
The dedication that goes into it is staunch, putting it mildly, but, then again, the Dunnes have been brought up in this line of work and it’s what they do best.
The books these past 12 months perhaps tell the story better than anything else and, as Tom himself pointed out, they’re as busy as ever down in Coolnacart.
“Any daylight that there is this time of year we’re going. I’m gone out the gate early in the morning and back late at night these days,” he concluded.
T & E Dunne Plant Hire
Coolnacart, Mountrath, Co Laois
Tel: 057 873 1756 / Mob: 087 239 4575
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 6 No 8, December 2018/January 2019
