ivor king piling md simon king tells brian weatherley … · that [general 44-tonne haulage] market...

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THE PILE DRIVERSIVOR KING PILING MD SIMON KING TELLS BRIAN WEATHERLEY WHY SERVICE IS KING, THAT

EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS IS A GIVEN

AND HOW STRONG FAMILY VALUES AND A CAN-DO

APPROACH ARE DRIVING THE COMPANY FORWARD.

PHOTOGRAPHY: CRAIG PUSEY

We live in an age of ‘big’ personalities and even bigger egos – in sport, business and did someone mention politics? So it’s refreshing to encounter someone who not only has a real passion for the industry he works in, but has a genuinely modest, ‘feet firmly on the ground’ approach to life. We’re talking to Simon King, managing director of nationwide piling specialist Ivor King Piling, the business started by his Father 45-years ago. Every day the company’s transport services division moves its heavy piling rigs, monster crawler cranes, big pumps and shed-loads of other specialist equipment to and from sites throughout the country using its fleet of lorry cranes, artics and specialist trailers. Yet tell King he’s running a professional heavy-haulage operation and he baulks at the suggestion.

“I read HeavyTorque and think ‘Wow!’ these boys really know what they’re doing. They’re the professionals,” he insists, before adding, “I think in our field, we’re good at moving plant about, we’re good moving big cranes.” Considering the unusual nature of King’s transport operations, we think he’s being unduly-modest. Yes, the company’s core business is piling work, and yes its transport division is an adjunct that supports that activity, but as King freely admits, “It’s an important adjunct and a nice part of it too. I’m quite passionate about transport. I love machines. I love all sorts of plant as well. That’s where my heart is really, being outside working, mending and making. That’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we’ve always had to do … because in the beginning we could only afford old equipment.”

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one artic and a rigid. Being farmers we used lorries for moving hay and all-sorts around. Having our own transport simply gave us a bit more control.”

Fast forward to 2019 and the reason why the company does its own thing on transport, and especially lorry loaders, hasn’t changed. It’s still about control. “The reason I bought Hiab lorry-loaders was because that I kept having to hire them in at a bloody fortune every day to move kit about on site!” recalls King. “I thought this is ridiculous, let’s have a go at this ourselves. Today we use them for speeding our jobs up. The lorry-loaders go in with some of the kit and they can unload it on site before the other guys get there with the really-heavy stuff.”

Currently, the Ivor King transport fleet is, by King’s own admission, something of a ‘mixed bag’. “We run eight tractor units – two of them are 44-tonners that move our gear around and we keep them busy all the time. But there’s not that much money in that [general 44-tonne haulage] market and it’s not where my heart is. You can move stuff around the

For King, running your own transport division (in the company’s case it’s divided into abnormal loads, general haulage and lorry-loader work) makes obvious sense – if you want control. As he puts it succinctly: “The trouble is, when you want to start a job on a Monday and you ring Joe Bloggs and say I need this 70-tonne rig moving to here he’ll perhaps say, ‘Well I’m busy Monday, I can do it Tuesday?’ That’s no good to me. We need to be moving something when WE need to move it.”

Not that the decision to run an in-house fleet is anything new. It goes way back as King explains: “It started many years ago when my Father was hiring lorries-in. I can remember him saying ‘We’ve spent £6,000 this month on moving kit about.’ While that’s not a lot of money these days, back then it was. So he went out and bought a left-hand-drive Volvo F12 and a three-axle King low-loader with a horrendous 9m-long bed on it which you couldn’t get around any corner. Back then we predominantly used crawler cranes, and we used it to move all our old mechanical 35-40-tonne cranes around.”

Neither are Simon and his younger brother Andy, the company’s contracts director, exactly strangers to trucks. The family business was originally in farming and King says: “We always had a small involvement with transport right from the early days when we had

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engine and ZF AS-Tronic 12-speed box with the WSK torque convertor, it’s a ‘proper job’ (King’s words) machine boasting an additional cooling pack behind the largest XXL cab, 16-tonne hub-reduction drive-axles and reinforced chassis frame.

When we remark on the assorted brands in his fleet King tells us “I tend to buy on service really. If somebody gives me good service, I’ll buy from them.” Naturally, the last thing you need on a major piling job is poor back-up on an artic or trailer. So as King declares unequivocally “I tend to vote with my feet. If somebody annoys me then I’ll go somewhere else.” And he insists that’s no more than what his own customers expect of him. “I’m a loyal customer but if I don’t get service, I don’t like it. We give our customers a good service at the end of the day, which we have to do. We’re here to provide a service to our customers.”

Ironically, it was a previous story in HeavyTorque (issue 16 Oct 2018) featuring an interview with Geoff Davies, MAN’s heavy haulage specialist salesman, and his much admired, and sadly, late-predecessor John Donnelly, that led King to the Lion brand. “I started reading about the MAN and I thought this is a proper truck. We all have problems with clutches and such and I was reading about the torque convertor and I was quite impressed. So I rang Geoff up and within 24 hours he’d got me a price and I

country quite cheaply using other people. That’s not where I try and focus.” Indeed, the real workhorses of the company pack a lot more muscle as he reports: “Two are 80-tonners with 65-tonne Hiabs on them, then the other four are a 250-tonne MAN, a 170-tonne Volvo, a 150-tonne Scania and a 150-tonne DAF – all of them are 8x4 units.”

It’s a similar story for trailers with the company running a three-bed/five Broshuis, bought last year, an earlier two-bed/four Broshuis, a four-axle Nooteboom low-bed with a single-axle jeep dolly, a five-axle power-steered Faymonville semi, and a six-axle Faymonville double-extending semi on pendulum axles. That’s not all. “I’ve also got a selection of urban trailers for getting in tight sites, flats,” says King, “and then I’ve got a fair few four-axle friction-steered semis for a 35-tonne/40-tonne excavator and then a couple of three-axle semis as well for 44-tonne operations.”

The most-recent fleet arrival is the company’s MAN TGX 41.640 four-axle tractor plated for 250-tonnes. Sporting the highest rating 640hp D38 15-litre



doing and I like to have the skills to know what I’m doing. I’d never take anything on that I don’t understand.” That desire not to over-reach is not only understandable, it’s a sound policy.

Today Simon and his brother Andy are the second generation managing the 86-strong family business started by their father Ivor with just £50 in 1974 – coincidentally the year Simon was born. So you could say he really has grown-up with the business. This year Ivor King Piling will boast an impressive turnover of £16m per annum although King predicts “We’re heading towards £20 million”. It also begs the obvious question – with the company’s roots originally in farming, how did the piling business start?

King explains: “It was as simple as the fact that somebody asked my father if he could put-in some piles one day. Forty-odd years ago things were a lot easier to ‘have a go at’ weren’t they?” he says with a laugh. “He was quite successful at it, and he made a few quid and that’s what he liked.” It was a good

thought ‘Wow this is service’ … I’d never met him before in my life but within a day he was coming to see me. I was really impressed and bought the truck off him. It’s a master of the job.”

While King says he’ll seldom need to take full advantage of the 41.640 8x4’s 250-tonne capability, he nevertheless reports: “But we obviously run at 150-tonnes at Cat 3 and we can move nearly 100-tonnes on our trailers now.” It also gives the company a new dimension regarding the possibility of outside work as King freely admits. “We already do a bit of third-party work and it’s something we’re hoping to do a little bit more of. We’re buying good gear with a view that we can offer a service to other people as well.”

However, he’s adamant that any expansion into third-party work won’t be at the expense of the company’s core business of piling. “We’re busy enough doing what we do at the moment – but you can never say never in the future. If a job came up, we’d look at it – but I like to know what we’re



choice. As our conversation turns to the current state of the business King is extremely candid about a subject that, in recent years, has become something of a taboo, at least in road transport. Namely profit. “We like making money at the end of the day and good business is about making money isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what you do, the end result should be profit. It’s not always, but most of the time as much as it can be, it should be.”

A significant proportion of Ivor King Piling’s profit is spent on ensuring the company has the most up-to-date kit and among its latest acquisitions are environmentally-friendly ‘silent’ piling rigs which drive a pile into the ground using hydraulic compression, rather than 'banging' it in with a pile-driver. “As a business we’ve invested heavily in silent piling,” confirms King, “Silent piling is a big thing now.”

So what exactly attracted King into the business? Was it a forgone conclusion he’d follow in his Father’s footsteps? “I think it’s been a life-long passion really,” he says. “Business for us is a ‘life-style’, it’s not a job. We come to work because we

love it. My Father loved it and it rubbed off on me from an early age. I started working on the farm when I was 16 and didn’t get into the business until I was 20. But Andy came straight into it at the age of 16 and was quickly installing sheet piles out on site! When I started I went into the workshop, mending trucks and piling hammers and cranes. And I worked my way through the business to where I am today.”

Despite being 79, Ivor King remains very much involved with the business. “He’s still the best man on the firm,” says Simon with obvious affection. “But he lets me make my own decisions, and my own mistakes as well, to be fair … which I’ve done! But anybody that tells you they’ve not made any mistake is lying.” It’s an interesting point to make, as managing succession in a family business can be a tricky thing. However, Simon King reckons it’s worked well for the company. “We got to a point probably 10 years ago when my Father started to let me have more and more. I’ve always been nipping at his heels and saying we could do this or do that, for the second generation I think it can go two different



ways. You can either sit back and spend the spoils and have an easy life or you can work like mad and take it to the next level – which is hopefully what he thinks we’ve done.”

Having previously noted King’s earlier self-effacing comments, he promptly delivers another one. “There’re not many people that get the opportunity to run a business like we’ve got. I sometimes say that I got my job out of name and not skill – which means I have to work a little bit harder than everyone else just to make it work. We have to put more in than everybody else because there are a lot of mouths to feed. You have to make sure that you get it right, because when you sit there and think about it, there’re 80-odd people who’ve got wives and families and children who are relying on you to make the right decisions, that you’ll put bread on their table.” Put like that, it’s some responsibility. And it’s one that King clearly takes very seriously.

Turning to the current state of the construction industry and the shadow being cast on it by Brexit, King believes the time is now right for the Government to commit itself to big infrastructure projects, whether it’s HS2 or Heathrow’s third runway. “I think it’s all going to hinge on what happens in the next few months,” he says. “Obviously we want HS2 because a big

infrastructure project like that could really kick-start the country and not only for us as a construction business but you think of all these hauliers – it would help everybody out there.”

Ivor King Piling is a FORS (Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme) silver fleet operator and King says that such accreditation schemes will increasingly play a part in who does and doesn’t win business in the construction sector, not least around London. “Definitely, I mean we’ve got another job coming on the A14 and it’s kind of mandatory these days on a lot of these jobs. FORS is going to spread more-and-more so you’re going to need it.” And while agreeing that such standards don’t come cheap King is contemplating making the final step to FORS gold. “It may not gain us a bit more business but it’s nice to be the best you can be,” he says pragmatically.

Meanwhile, when it comes to actually delivering piles and piling equipment onto sites, King says it’s becoming increasingly-more complicated to gain access to big urban and inner-city sites. “There are a lot of curfews and restrictions these days,” he



confirms. “It can take a lot of work actually physically getting into and out of places. With some jobs you just can’t get in with a big trailer. Access is a massive issue and we’re very into building street calming and putting bollards everywhere – but access does make our lives very difficult.”

Finding and keeping the right drivers to handle those challenges and frustrations is hardly easy either. “Definitely”, agrees King before adding, “That’s why we like to train a lot of people in-house. Some of the best drivers I’ve got are ones who we’ve brought in to drive an artic first, and then have worked through the ranks and are now driving an artic with a big trailer.” Insisting “I like home-grown talent and I champion this” King says that “Most of the people who come and work for us will either stay a week or a lifetime. I like people to retire with us, it’s a good feeling that you’ve looked after them.” It’s a view that’s all-too-often missing in today’s increasingly-impersonal business world.

Along with running its own trucks, Ivor King Piling also operates its own escort service. “We only have a police escort if we need one,” says King. “Otherwise we self-escort pretty-much all the low-loaders most of the time. These things are so big and awkward and traffic is such a nightmare it makes our lives easier, the guys know what they’re doing, they work together, they know how to unload

a machine and the beauty in our job is that our drivers can drive all our kit. I don’t need to send a driver for the machine, these guys can take a machine and drop it off and between him and the escort driver they’ve got the job sorted.”

As we wind up our interview, King surprises us again by offering a sympathetic hand to the very people his drivers are frequently having to deal with out on the road. “I do occasionally get phone calls saying ‘Your low-loader driver is mad he’s just cut me up.’ People just don’t understand the amount of room that’s needed to get these trailers around a corner. The biggest trouble is sometimes it’s not the car drivers’ fault, it’s just that they’re in a rush, they don’t understand what we’re doing and it’s just a nature of the beast. But it’s what we have to deal with, and just get on with.” It’s a sentiment that will strike a chord with a lot of HeavyTorque readers.

To see more on the Ivor King Piling business and the fascinating array of services it offers, including transport, visit: www.ivorking.co.uk.


ivor king piling md simon king tells brian weatherley … · that [general 44-tonne haulage] market...

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