A decade of progression

Within ten short years, Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks has certainly come a long way. The company offers a varied service, providing the construction industry with a wide range of stone products from its quarry in Ballina as well as ancillary plant hire and construction services. At the end of the current calendar year, the proprietor will relocate his entire fleet to a brand new quarry on the Killala Road. Irish Trucker decided to put on our hard hat and take a closer look…

The quarry is serviced by a modern fleet of machinery

They say that variety is the spice of life. While this is a debatable, simplified generalisation, there’s no doubting that a bit of variety always keeps things interesting. At Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks, a diverse range of construction-related activities ensures that no two days are ever the same.

A varied and flexible concern, Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks specialises in an assortment of key areas within the construction sector. At the heart of the business is the quarry in Ballina, which provides stone and rock solutions to builders, local authorities and private users all over the Mayo/Sligo and general Connacht region. An extensive fleet of vehicles and machinery serves the quarry and Shane also provides a plant hire service to customers. He also draws on his vast knowledge of the sector to develop and build houses, thereby ensuring a wide and thorough range of services.

Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks was established a decade ago and is headquartered in Ballina, County Mayo. The founder and proprietor is a Sligo man, who originally operated from his hometown of Dromore West in the Yeats County. Any haulier familiar with routes in the west of Ireland will know that Dromore West is a village located in west Sligo on the main Sligo-Ballina road, approximately 35 kilometres from Sligo and 22 from Ballina.

When Shane opened the quarry down the road in Ballina, this became his new base. The existing quarry will be obsolete in December 2007 and plans are in place for complete relocation to a brand new quarry facility on the Killala Road. It’s projected that the new quarry will last for at least 20 years, so the long term stability of the company is in safe hands.

From left: Shane Tully (proprietor), Neil Tully (plant manager), Des Hannon (fitter) and Des Green (accountant)

The quarry produces all types of stone products, from builders clay to quarry rock and graded stone. This is sold to the construction industry as well as to County Councils in both Sligo and Mayo. Private users are also catered for. “We never turn a potential customer away,” Shane notes. “We can accommodate any size of order from one load up.”
Many of the orders are of a particularly substantial variety. In the past, Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks has provided raw materials for a huge construction job at Ballina Beverages as well as numerous national roads projects and local building developments.

Like any quarrying company, Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks carries a vast stock of plant. The fleet includes artics, mobile crushers, screeners, loading shovels, heavy haulage equipment and excavators of various sizes between three and 60 tonne. All the lorries are Scania, purchased from Cawley Commercials in Sligo, the main Scania dealer for the north west, while the plant is sourced from McHales Plant Hire in Dublin.
The company handles a lot of contract work for the likes of John Sisk and McInerney Homes and also services the local authorities with its plant hire business.

Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks provides stone and rock solutions to builders, local authorities and private users

This month, Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks is putting a brand new 10-axle lowloader on the road – with a capacity of 90 tonne. To maintain and service his fleet of plant and trucks, Shane oversees his own workshop in Ballina, which helps keep overheads down and ensures that all vehicles and equipment are in perfect working order at all times.
Shane Tully Plant Hire & Groundworks’ management team includes Neil Tully, plant manager and operations manager Bernard McDermott, who looks after the construction and groundworks jobs.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Shane has also diversified into construction. We have built quality homes on our own developments and have built homes for other builders in the Connacht region. We build around 100 houses a year. Some of these are our own developments and some are for other builders.”
With the move to a new quarry in the pipeline, Shane Tully Plant Hire and Groundworks looks set for a bright future. To date, the company has made a major impression in the local quarrying, plant hire and construction industries and the founder is confident that the new quarry will be a big success.