BLACKWOOD Plant Hire has already raised over £2,100 for Parkinson’s UK, just two months on from unveiling a stunning Scania T-cab Truck hand-painted in tribute to Scottish comedy legend Billy Connolly.
The Kilmarnock-based construction equipment hire specialist, which was recently named Small and Mid-Sized Rental Company of the Year at the European Rental Awards in Lisbon, is aiming to raise £5,000 for the charity by the end of the year.
Anticipating the swell of attention the distinctive truck would attract, Blackwood placed QR codes on the doors of the vehicle to direct people straight to the donation page.
“It’s important to get awareness out there,” Blackwood Plant Hire MD Paul McCormack told Project Scotland. “A lot more people suffer from Parkinson’s than many think – it’s close to a lot of people’s hearts at the company and some of our customers as well.”
The wife of the firm’s operations director, Allan Wilson, came up with the fundraising idea after pointing out how many Blackwood employees are fans of the Big Yin’s work. Billy Connolly was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2013 and has lived with the condition, in which parts of the brain become progressively damaged, for over a decade.
“We all love Billy Connolly, so thought it was a great idea,” Paul added. “We hope at some point he’ll come and see it!”
The truck recently scooped the Best Paintwork Award at TruckfestScotland 2024 and finished third in the Best Custom Truck Category. It was also named Vehicle of the Show at Scotland’s Motoring Festival.
“The credit needs to go to Adam Haden, the airbrush artist, because it’s unreal,” Paul continued. He reckons high-quality trucks are the best advertisement for hire firms, with first impressions mattering on sites.
Blackwood is currently going from strength-to-strength. The company’s construction machines featured on a number of high-profile stands at ScotPlant 2024 earlier this year and the business has recently opened new depots in Nairn and Inverurie as part of ambitious growth plans.
“We’ve worked in the north of Scotland for over 15 years, but we need to put roots down there to attract operators into the business that are local and try to feed into the local community,” Paul explained. “There’s a lot of work up there across the next 2-5 years, so we want to make sure we’re in the area for it.”
Keen to invest further in the north of Scotland, Blackwood is planning to launch a training academy at the Inverurie base within the next year, with the aim of training between 10 and 20 operators annually.
The business is still on a high from its triumph at the European Rental Awards earlier this summer, where it fought off competition from hire firms in Spain, Iceland, and Ireland to win a category open to businesses with revenues of less than €15 million.
Judges commented on Blackwood’s’ ‘proactive’ approach to training, with the firm first opening its training academy in Stewarton, Ayrshire in 2022 with the intention of having operators able to ‘hit the ground running’ amidst well documented sector skills shortages.
“We also always want to know who’s driving our machines,” Paul continued, before telling of his frustration at social media posts seeking drivers for machines. “You’d be as well standing down the street with a set of keys and saying, ‘go drive it’. I always say an average excavator is between £100,000 and £200,000, so if you had a supercar of a similar value, you wouldn’t stand in the street and offer random people the chance to drive it, would you? I don’t understand the mindset that you can just put any Tom, Dick, or Harry on these machines. We like to know who’s on our machines, and I think our customers appreciate that we know who’s on them.”
Growth is expected to continue at the firm over the next few years, with the focus currently on the two new depots to ensure they are up to Blackwood’s required standard. Investment in new machinery is also expected, with the company keen to add to recent fleet additions which included 50-tonne excavators and 30-tonne trucks.
The charity target of £5,000 for Parkinson’s UK is also hoped to be hit by the turn of the year. You can donate by visiting Blackwood Plant Hire’s JustGiving page.
