22.05.2006

What is happening at Quigley?

We have been receiving a steady stream of calls and mails since mid April regarding the future of Quigley UK Ltd, The Runcorn Headquartered crane hire company with depots in Warrington, Birmingham and London.

We have made several calls and left messages for joint managing directors, Gary and Shaun Quigley all of which have so far gone unanswered.

At Intermat we did manage to ascertain that the company had closed its London branch, barely nine months after it opened, and returned a number of cranes to Terex Demag, which had sold them on Quigley’s behalf.

We now also know that the Quigley brothers formed a new company, Quigley UK Lifting services Ltd, on April 21 2006.
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The flagship of the Quigley fleet an uprated Terex Demag AC700, dubbed the 850 tonne AC2100

It seems from the company’s web site that this is now the operating company for Quigley UK. While we are still not 100 percent certain as to the precise fate of Quigley UK Ltd, three very reliable sources have confirmed that the company has filed for some form of administration.

Shaun and Gary Quigley are the directors of both the old and the new companies. Most, if not all of the remaining 15 to 20 Quigley UK Ltd cranes are financed. One assumes that the Quigley’s are planning to have the leases for those cranes transferred to the new company?

Vertikal Comment

When Shaun and Gary Quigley set up Quigley UK, they appear to have been determined to run a quality operation, they purchased an all new fleet of modern Terex Demag cranes, implemented solid operational and safety practices, even obtaining ISO9001 accreditation.

Their mistake is likely to have been the speed with which they expanded the company and the fact that they did so with all new cranes and were thus highly leveraged.

As is usual in such situations rates are usually the first thing to fall, in order to keep the cash, any cash, coming in to meet interest payments. This is often the beginning of the end for a hire company.

The Quigley’s have been in the crane business for some time, Shaun and Gary’s father, Jimmy Quigley, ran Overmile Crane Hire, Jubilee Crane Hire, Dixons Crane Hire and then Dixons Universal Crane Hire. That business was acquired by Baldwins in the mid 90’s.

The Quigley brothers, joined Baldwins but did not stay long. The two left and then teamed up with Roger Taylor who has a string of crane hire and business failures to his name.

Taylor with long term partner in …business, David Symon had already seen Peterhead crane hire go into receivership and was working with Taylor crane hire. Taylor formed Quigley Crane Hire, as part of the Taylor crane group and put the two young Quigley’s in as managers, the third member of the Taylor group was Duncan crane hire,

The Taylor crane group became JD Cranes with Maurice Johnson leading a management buy out funded by Roger Taylor. The new company quickly ran into trouble and was placed in administration.

JD crane hire was eventually purchased by GBK rental services which was at the time owned by the Bank of Scotland, Roger Quenby and two other investors.

Sometime after Maurice Johnson took over the Taylor/JD crane business, the Quigleys departed and founded Quigley UK Ltd.

Duncan crane hire somehow popped up again as part of Cox Hire the successor to the Cox Plant business, which David Symon saw into receivership twice last year with massive losses.

Keeping up with all this sets the head spinning, and boggles the mind, surely there is no place for such antics in the crane hire business?

In the old days, those wishing to form their own crane hire business started off with one or more used cranes and by offering a good personal service, built up a solid foundation. This then allowed the purchase of the first new cranes and then gradually the business was built up at a steady pace.

With crane manufacturers pushing to gain market share in the 90's, companies were financed and supported way beyond their ability to pay.

The net result of this has been extremely negative for the UK crane hire industry helping keep rates at uneconomic levels. The access business saw exactly the same pattern between 1998 and 2002, resulting in a series of major business failures and uneconomic rates.

Hopefully with both crane and access manufacturers sitting on significant order books this short term buying of business is now well behind us.

So what will become of Quigley UK (Ltd or Lifting services Ltd)? That will, we imagine, depend very much on the company that holds the leases on the company’s cranes.

With demand and prices for used cranes at record levels it is likely to take a great deal of persuasion on the part of the Quigley brothers to hold on to them.

We would very much welcome some comment and input from anyone at Quigley UK.

Watch this space.