12.02.2004

Peter Hird Jnr replaces Peter Hird Snr

Peter Hird, the well-known owner and managing director of Peter Hird and Sons Ltd celebrated his 65th birthday on Saturday and announced his retirement, just as the Hull-based firm he founded celebrates its 21st anniversary.

Peter Hird Jnr, his eldest son, who has worked alongside his father almost from the start, has taken over as managing director and joint-owner. Peter Hird Jnr has been at the forefront of developing the company's industrial crane sales and rental business with the formation of Valla Cranes UK, one of the most successful outlets for Italian-based Valla cranes.

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Peter Hird Jnr.

Peter Hird senior is a well-known figure in the cranes and access industries, having rented both cranes and access platforms for many years. He is probably best known, however, for his attention to the technical detail of the products that the company buys for its rental fleet. Some ten years ago he developed a comparative test for electric battery powered work platforms, conceiving a work cycle that represented actual use and then testing machines by how many cycles a full battery pack would provide. This became know worldwide as the “Hird test”. He was also responsible for a number of small but very practical ideas that platform producers adopted into their standard models.

This passion for functionality and design detail has clearly rubbed off on Peter Hird junior. It is most obvious when he talks about the Valla crane range. A prime example of this is the development of the new electric powered, rubber tracked Valla 20TRX industrial crane, a radically new type of product from a company not noted for ground breaking product introdutions. The development if this highly practical product has been driven by Hird looking to solve specific lifting problems that the company has encountered, particularly in its successful industrial services and machinery moving business.

Two to three years on from taking over the Valla account, the
company is seeing the initial efforts of selling the concept really beginning to pay off. The Valla range runs the whole gamut of compact pollution free lifting machines; Hird says that around 95 per cent of Vallas' production is electric powered. Models range from the tiny 20E with its two tonne lifting capacity, 950 millimetre overall width, and 1,950 kilogram gross weight, right up to a substantial 45 tonne unit. Most models offer their full load chart free on wheels with zero degree turning radius.

In addition to Valla Cranes UK, Peter Hird Ltd specialize in Machinery and industrial lifting/moving services and have developed their skills as specialists within specific industries such as food, furniture and Pharmaceutical production plants.

In addition to the modest crane hire fleet they also run a sizeable powered access rental business, largely self propelled booms and scissors, are a local Genie dealer and a run a successful training centre, offering up to 65 different courses including crane operation and IPAF operator training courses.

One thing is clear; the new managing director intends to stamp his individual mark on the 21-year-old company, while building on the strengths and diversity that father and son have created.