PLANTMAN
Plantman’s fleet of LiuGong Loaders
Plantman equipment is a privately owned Western Australian company principally engaged in Earthmoving and mining equipment rental, mechanical workshops and sales within Australia. With 30 years industry experience, Michael Elliot founded the company in 1993 and has continued as Managing Director to develop and expand his company dramatically over the next 15 years.
Michael Elliot made the decision to purchase LiuGong construction equipment for their rental fleet as he was convinced of their value for money, reliability and believed LiuGong to be a trustworthy company to deal with. “The high standard of their design and quality of manufacturing is quite apparent and has been proven over the last few years” said Michael.
“We operate various machines such as loaders, excavators and compactors in a range of construction and mining applications. The power train (engine transmission hydraulics and axels) are well known O.E.M manufacturers and well accepted throughout Australia, which ensures a reliable parts and service support.”
Jordan adds “The Support is great, you’ve got Robbo in Sydney; you just call him up and say ‘I need this, I need that’ and it’s always on the next plane over. You know, we’re the good Chinese, we’ve got a few of these in our rental fleet along with loads of other dozers, dump trucks etc, we don’t sell them, only rent them out so we put our money where our mouth is so to speak, and because of the great value for money we’ve experienced with these machines, I’d say they’re the only loader, roller or excavator we’d buy.”
“In particular, I can tell you that the roller has just been working on a project up north where it’s been helping to build a big railway extension for FMG; it’s the construction of 260KM of iron ore rail, so we’ve had our LiuGong roller up on the railway doing the compacting, for the sleepers. It performed beautifully, we had a grader in front of it and then the roller following and compacting to the exact specifications that they need. The Cummins engine is great; they’re always around and always willing to help. The people that had it recently are actually one of the biggest mining companies in WA and they’re as happy as Larry with it” said Jordan.
Plantmans LiuGong Roller
Michael went on to say “We own other well known brands of equipment and find LiuGongs operating costs per hour to be better than most at the moment. Our clients and machine operators are rightfully a fussy bunch and they demand machine safety and comfort, which LiuGong deliver.”
“You’ve heard of national hire? Well they’ve given Caterpillar the Heave-ho, and now they go to Ross May down at Vasse or us, they’re using LiuGong now, which is great” said Jordan.
“The deal is, if you come to me and say ‘look I wanna hire an excavator or whatever for a year’ I’m going to buy a LiuGong straight away, put it in the rental fleet, A Cat will cost over double, they cost a lot of money to pay back, because remember you’ve got the interest requirement, plus maintenance after a while, I’d definitely buy a LiuGong straight away. What’s the point in buying CAT? That’s what I say to a lot of these guys that do house plans and those sorts of things, yeah good on you, you’ve got a CAT, but they cost you the earth – they are a lot of money! Plus you’ve got to pay GST and the interest component on them…LiuGong’s the way to go; half your capital outlay and you’re still digging the same hole, still pushing the same dirt, doing the same thing except it’s much cheaper.” said Jordan.
Michael finishes off our meeting by adding “The equipment has been well accepted by our clients and has proven to be reliable and economical to run”. “We intend to expand our fleet of LiuGong construction equipment within the next twelve months and we are a very satisfied customer.”
Ron Munce, Roxy Grafton and Jordan Elliot
