A Knight for all seasons

by Nick Drew | Fri 02 Feb 2018

A Knight for all seasons

Taking a look back at one of my articles that first appeared in Earthmovers Magazine last year and bringing it to life here on the internet.

Like many of us in the plant game 30 year old Peter Knight was not particularly interested in school during his formative years growing up in Enfield, North London. This ethos didn’t change following a family move to Devon when Peter was just 14 years old and as soon as he was old enough to work the young man was off and quickly got bitten by the work bug! Peter first introduction to the working world was via a work experience period with firm from the nearby village of Lewdown, called S & M Fencing Contractors where he was later offered a full time position. During the next 4 years Peter gained a wealth of experience in the world of fencing and also in groundworks operating the company’s JCB 3CX. When this firm eventually ceased trading Peter saw an opportunity to achieve his dream of setting up his own business engaged primarily in fencing and agricultural groundworks and 10 years ago Knight Excavation and Fencing Services was founded.

Having set up the business Peter was keen to purchase his first machine and located a second hand Hyundai Robex 130-3 in North West Wales, Peter told us about the machine, “The Hyundai was a reasonably priced machine and had a brilliant Cummins engine in it, but you would spend 10 hours operating it, followed by an equal number of hours repairing it to get it ready for the next shift! It was a hell of a digger mind and with a short dipper fitted it would out dig many machines in the power stakes, but in those days they were making pretty unreliable kit to be fair. I ran it for 5 years and then replaced it with a Hitachi Zaxis 130LC which was a great machine and still on the fleet today”.

Word soon spread around that Peter had a machine and they picked up a lot of work locally doing hedging, ditch cleaning, emptying slurry pits and general agricultural groundworks, no mean feat for anyone who is not a “true local” in this part of the world. The business has expanded quite rapidly to become a multi-faceted affair and as an ambitious Peter admits, they will have a go at anything and everything. They have become actively engaged in the solar farm industry which is a major step for the business and has seen them working up country as far away as Leeds in Yorkshire and Peterlee in the North East on a site over-looking the Caterpillar ADT factory. As a result of the increased workload Peter has invested in more second hand Hitachi machines, with the existing Zaxis 130 now being joined by a 13 tonne class ZX130LCN-3, a 21 tonne Zaxis 210LC-3, 5 tonne ZX55U-5 and a 3 tonne ZX29U-5.

Since making the move to Hitachi hydraulic excavators Peter has become a devoted fan of the Japanese brand saying, “I really don’t think you can get any better, they are just great machines, comfortable to operate, smooth hydraulics, and powerful. I also like the fact that we are well served by the local Hitachi branch in Okehampton which is very handy for picking up parts. The resale value with the Hitachi product is excellent and you just won’t beat them for reliability, we have one out there with over 10,000 hours on it and it just keeps digging as good as a brand new one!” Peter continued, “The biggest problem we face like many today is finding operators, especially with us running slightly older machines, a lot of these young lads are not happy unless there’s a USB point in the machine for their phones, but I’m very happy with my Hitachi’s and I’m reluctant to try anything else, I don’t think I will ever sell my Dash-1 ZX130 model, it’s been a cracking little digger and owes me nothing. We have recently modified that one up for forestry work with cages over the cab, tree shear attachment and a rotating timber grab and its ideal for working in that environment”.

“I feel it’s all very well and good running shiny new kit but it has to pay to run it. We also find a lot of guys with new machines are reluctant to work in amongst trees and bushes for fear of getting them scratched or in boggy ponds and the like because they don’t want to get them dirty. We take a different approach, we will tackle any job and just get stuck into it, which in the long run has proven to give us a lot of credibility at the end of the day, yes the machines may get marked and dirty, but we have a good maintenance man who will clean them up and service them afterwards, the machines are there to work after all”.

The company also keep a large range of attachments with all machines running a full range of digging buckets and V ditching buckets and hydraulic hammers for the 13 tonne and 21 tonne machines, at first glance it looks like a lot of kit to have hanging around but it is of course always handy to have such items at your disposal when needed. Peter also said that if a job comes in requiring a special work tool he will always invest in a new attachment to add to the arsenal. As previously mentioned the solar farm work has really taken of for Knight Excavation and Fencing Services Peter told us more about it, “When we first took on this kind of work we were putting in stone roads around 100 – 200 metres long, but on our last job in Potters Bar on the outskirts of London, we excavated a put down stone for a road that was 4 miles long! We general do the roads and build up a compound area using locally sourced stone or crushed concrete, depending on the clients preferred specification. Our fencing team put up the security fence around the perimeter of the site while another team perform all the trench work for the cable ducting throughout the site. On one recent high profile job for Coca Cola in Leeds we excavated a trench for a high voltage cable that was 6 miles long which kept us all busy!”

The installation of solar farm infrastructure has led on to another spin off business for Knight Excavations with the securing of a 25 year maintenance contract for the sites which involves grass cutting, trimming, tree planting and even the washing of the solar panels themselves. Peter has recently held trials of an excavator mounted washing rotary brush attachment from an Italian manufacturer and was so impressed with how its speeds up the operation it’s highly likely that he will add one to the fleet of attachments. Peter is also looking at tracked skid steer loaders which could be used to power a grass flail mower attachment as he looks to cut down on the need to deploy men with strimmer’s for those hard to reach bits of grass under the panels. He has looked at his preferred choice from Bobcat, but has also trialled the JCB 1CXT compact tracked backhoe loader too which offers all the benefits of a conventional tracked skid steer, with the added bonus of a backhoe excavator, but forward visibility to the attachment was not as good as he expected on that concept.

On the agricultural contracting side of things Peter estimates that the company supplies and fixes 25,000 metres of fencing a year on average and around half that amount in hedging and ditching in addition supplying hay and straw to a whole range of customers in the farming and equestrian community locally. Another side line is the felling, preparation and selling of fire wood for the long winter months, Peter estimates they sell around 1,500 tonnes of logs per year which go to a supplier in the Plymouth area as well local buyers.

They are also moving into the housebuilding sector working with private builders and a lot of this work is done and overseen by foreman Gary Smale who at only 24 years of age has amassed a lot of experience growing up in the contracting game while working for another well-known company locally. Peter said, “I’m more of a bulk digger type of guy to be honest, I like to get in and rip it out fast, whereas Gary has a lot more patience than me, so he tends to do all the fiddly finishing work, like with most things in life, its horses for courses and I think we complement each other quite well.

At this moment in time the company only employs around 5 full time staff with the office being managed by Sarah Jones who mans the phones and does all the paperwork. Peter says “Good staff are hard to find these days but I have a good core of lads with me and when we need others we have some good contacts that will help out on a self-employed basis”. It was clear to see during my visit that Peter is very much a work driven man, he openly admits to not taking a holiday as he gets bored and would rather be at work, but as the old saying goes, you only get out, what you are prepared to put in, and Peter definitely has the work ethic to succeed.

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