Plant Hire

Excavators and machinery suited to residential and light civil work: site clearance and strip-out, foundation and drainage digs, trenching for services, level changes and cut-and-fill, demolition of outbuildings and hardstandings, muck shifting, and landscaping work such as ponds, banks and driveway formation.

The plant side of this business is the oldest part of it. Donie Murphy Plant Hire was set up in 1976, and the machinery has been part of how the family works ever since. That history is why the equipment is maintained rather than run into the ground.

Tell us the site and the work rather than the machine, and we will advise. Access width, overhead lines, ground bearing, what has to be lifted and where the spoil is going all decide what should turn up. Sending a machine that is too big for a suburban side entrance wastes a day for everyone, and one that is too small doubles the hours.

Operated hire is what most homeowners and smaller builders take. An experienced operator reads ground conditions, works to levels and knows when to stop and ask a question rather than dig through a service. Self-drive is available where you have a competent, ticketed operator of your own.

We confirm what is arriving, when, and how long the work should realistically take before anything is booked. Machines are serviced, and delivery and collection are arranged so you are not paying for a machine sitting idle on a Friday. Insurance and safe systems of work are in place for operated hire; for self-drive we set out clearly what responsibility sits with you.

If the job turns out to be bigger than a machine and an operator — if it really needs setting out, drainage design and foundations — we will tell you that rather than leaving you to manage a build one hire at a time.

On our own projects the plant is already ours, so groundworks, extensions and new builds are not held up waiting on a hire yard. Where we supply plant to someone else's job, we can also take on the groundworks package outright, and from there the same team can carry a project through structure, carpentry, joinery, kitchens and interiors and painting and decorating under one contract.