HSS adds heavier equipment to London rental fleet

Laois Hire, based in the Republic of Ireland and part of the HSS Group since 2005, is shipping a range of excavators, site dumpers and self-propelled aerial platforms to the HSS Beckton supercentre in east London. The equipment will be available to customers throughout the London area, where HSS has 50 branches.

Jon Overman, HSS managing director for the London area, said; "For obvious reasons, there's a lot of demand for this kind of plant equipment in east London at the moment. Our customers want to work with us for all their hire requirements, even beyond our core range, and in response to that we've decided to add plant items to our fleet for the first time."

HSS is a member of the Hire Alliance, one of two rental consortia officially working on the Olympics projects. The consortium includes A-Plant, HSS Hire, Screwfix, Aggreko, DHL, Greenshields JCB, Hilti and JLG.

The addition of heavy equipment is a departure for HSS, since it is best known as a tool rental company, renting mainly smaller equipment. It has previously offered heavy equipment through its ‘One-Call' outsourcing service, but this is the first time it has made available a fleet of its own heavier machines in the UK.

Anna Exley, communications manager at HSS, told IRN that the London initiative was not a "wholesale advance into delivering plant direct - our partnerships with plant operators work well for us - but on the other hand, if other opportunities arise in other areas of the UK, we'd consider the same approach."

Michael Killeen, managing director of HSS Hire Ireland and Laois Hire, said: "As part of HSS Hire, I'm delighted to now introduce our products and services to the UK too - together we'll offer unrivalled products, experience, training and support across a much extended range of equipment".