90 | CONTRACTING Mitchell Earthmoving T T Hugh de Lacy Island location no barrier to demand Most of the company’s demand is for house sites, drillings, footings, driveways, retaining and barrier pile walls, extending to landscaping, basement extensions, demolition and rock-breaking. Your Business, Your Industry, Your News. Y r i , r I tr , r . Each edition priority delivered to your door. . www.waterfordpress.co.nz/subscriptions . . . i i 03 983 5500 Stay informed; we work with business owners and decision-makers across all economic sectors, profiling their success. i ; i i i i - ll i , ili i . businessnorth Spring 2019 www.waterfordpress.co.nz Sheep&Beef Beefing up the horsepower Champion NZ sire Savabeel ISSN 2703-2353 Waikato Stud combines a lucrative cattle operation with it’s highly successful thoroughbred stud – Page 42 At Waterford Press, your business is our news “We’re lucky enough to have a loyal client base, and we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, all of it on Waiheke...” Alby Mitchell drove machinery for 13 years for a company employing his brother-in-law before launching out his own as Mitchell Earthmoving on Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf. “I’d finished working for a mate when the bro-in-law asked me if I wanted to drive a traxcavator with a sheepsfoot roller behind, and I was with that company until 2004 when I decided to give it a go myself, starting out with a 5.5t digger and a six-wheeler truck doing house sites and driveways,” Alby says. While working on an island can present its problems, demand for Alby’s services isn’t one of them. “We’re lucky enough to have a loyal client base, and we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, all of it on Waiheke – we don’t have to go chasing work on the mainland,” he says. “The biggest problem in working on an island is finding staff, maintaining our gear and not being able to just drive down the road to get whatever you need.” Alby has lived on Waiheke for 50 years, the last 20 running Mitchell Earthmoving, the island’s biggest earthmoving company with an inventory of plant enabling it to tackle virtually any earthmoving job the residents come up with. Most of the company’s demand is for house sites, drillings, footings, driveways, retaining and barrier pile walls, extending to landscaping, basement extensions, demolition and rock-breaking. Michell Earthmoving also offers cartage and machine transporting, while concreting work includes driveways, footpaths and piles. “A specialty is the often tricky task of building seawalls to protect existing homes after slips, or barrier pile walls to prevent slips, and we also do seawalls,” Alby says. Such a range of services requires a diversified inventory of plant, including no fewer than nine excavators ranging in size from 1.7 to 13 tonnes, a 4t skid-steer, a padfoot or smooth drum-roller, three four-wheel-drive tip-trucks from three to seven tonnes, a sixwheeled tipper, one eight-wheeled and one four-wheeled transporter. Maintenance of plant on an island has the potential to be a problem, but a mobile mechanic from the mainland leaves a truck on the island and comes over most days. “We’ve also invested in a hydraulic hose truck to keep our machines on the road,” Alby says. “Staff numbers have been as high as 22, but these days the company has a crew of six or seven – we’re a couple of operators and a truck driver short of what we need.” A few years ago, Alby’s son Hayden came back to the company, and he deals with clients and runs the day-to-day workings, allowing Alby to get back behind the wheel. Among Mitchell Earthmoving’s recently completed projects are large house sites on the hillside of Fourth Avenue, The Strand and Browns Road, Onetangi; cutting and filling house sites on Seaview Rd and Te Miro Lane, installing barrier pile walls in front of an existing house at Kennedy Point, and replacing collapsing driveway retaining walls in Waiheke and Orapui. TC Construction Ltd Waiheke Island NEW BUILDS AND RENOVATIONS Quality Construction by a Proven Team Craig Childs 021 222 9502 Tups McGregor/Dunn 021 819920
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