PowerTorque’s European Correspondent, Will Shiers meets a man who has built up several successful tipper firms, helping to shape London’s skyline in the process.
BODY///“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” says Aiden Kelly, quoting American writer Mark Twain.
He’s general manager at North West London-based Kingscote Haulage, and the job he’s referring to, and has been enjoying for the last 44 years, is moving muck. During his ‘lifetime of lorries, quarries and tips’ he’s worked on some of the England’s capital city’s biggest civil engineering projects, moved millions of tonnes of muck, and helped to shape the current skyline.
Aiden’s story starts in 1979, when as a teenager he began working for his father Frank Kelly’s London-based tipper firm, Power Presses and Plants.
“I remember the first job,” says Aiden. “We had 70 trucks working on a job, including 35 of my father’s, and we moved 750,000 tonnes of muck. I would open the weigh-bridge at 5.30am, and stay there until sunset. It was such an experience for me, and I learned so much, including how to drink!”
Hearing him reminisce about the jobs he carried out in the late-1970s and early-1980s, and talk about the people he worked with, is like listening to a who’s who of the current London muck-away world. Over the last half a century the Irish have made a massive impact on London’s construction industry, with most of today’s biggest tipper operators and construction firms being Irish-owned, and Aiden and his father knew them while they were just starting out.
He explains that most arrived in London from Ireland with a few quid in their back pockets, and with hard work and good business acumen, built up massive fleets of tippers. This is exactly what happened to Frank Kelly, who left Ireland for London at the age of 16, soon finding himself a job as a fitter. Once he had enough money saved up, he bought himself a truck. By the 1970s he’d built up a fleet, and was working on some big projects in the south east of England.
Then, in the early 1980s, the entire business, with its 45 trucks, was sold on. But not content with that success, the father and son team did exactly the same again, building up another successful firm, and selling that too.
Having repeated the cycle a few times, more latterly on his own, Aiden decided it was time for a change. From now on he would use his vast knowledge, and impressive list of contacts, to do exactly the same for large contractors that required a haulage fleet.
To quote Mark Twain again: “There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.” Aiden Kelly definitely falls into the former group.
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