If the world of height rental doesn’t seem like the most glamorous profession in the world, think again. Height For Hire have some stories to tell.
Fergus and Frances McArdle are two of eight siblings involved in the running of Height For Hire, one of Ireland’s – and Europe’s – most successful machine rental companies that allows people to work at great heights.
If something goes wrong at the upper levels of your skyscraper, these are the people you call.
Speaking to host Tadhg Enright on The Architects of Business, in partnership with EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™, Fergus and Frances revealed how their job is seldom dull, and they’ve worked on some massive projects over 40 years in the business.
“Our machinery does bring us to interesting places, you know we would do a certain amount of film or TV work so we would have worked on Game of Thrones over the course of that series,” Fergus told host Tadhg Enright.
“Also Die Hard 5 was one that we did in Budapest, that’s a nice one to be involved in.
“1982 in Slane; so we got this call anyway and it was the star of the fleet at the time, it was a Starlift 722. So they rang up and said, ‘we need a cherry picker for Mick Jagger to go up in. They painted it pink…”
Listen to the full show here…
Both Fergus and Frances know that being two of eight siblings is a massive help when it comes to the trust of their customers, and how the “corporate layers” of certain corporations are getting found out, more and more.
“We all have the same surname, and you give us the business, we won’t let you down. And that stands for something I think,” Fergus insisted.
“Absolutely and even some of the customers that we go out to meet will say, ‘when I ring one of your competitors, I get a different person every time’,” agreed Frances.
“I think there’s a big comfort if you’re going in and you’re pricing and tendering for work, that might be two or three years away, the person that is pricing that work and helping you to choose your machinery and the supply chain, that they’re still going to be there.
“And I think that the fact – I’m in this business over 25 years now – so there’s sustainability, there’s business continuity, and hopefully for a long time there’ll be the McArdle name over the door whereas a lot of our competitors don’t have that.
“They get bought and sold, the core values are changing, it’s quite frustrating for some of the people who have to get machinery from them.”
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