Home // Latest News
Just like Hamilton Brothers, the Malcolm Group is a successful family venture. We spoke to Andrew Malcolm, Chief Executive Officer and son of Donald Malcolm, to find out more about their business and the Wacker Neuson machinery they bought from us.
Andrew Malcolm & Harry Denholm at the Donald Malcolm Heritage Centre
We were founded in 1922, so we are celebrating our centenary this year. We’re very much a family organisation, with both the third and fourth generation now in the business. Our business deals with two successful divisions: we have the logistics division, which specialises in road transport, warehousing and rail. The other side is our construction division, and that involves groundworks, infrastructure, civil engineering, plant and tipper hire, recycling and reprocessing.
We very much stick to our grass roots and what we know best, but we’re always looking to diversity into new areas to make ourselves different from the rest. But like most companies, our biggest asset is our people – most of our senior team are homebred, and we can pride ourselves on our retention.
The construction side is the original part, because my dad was very much a plant and tipper hire kind of man, and we had a very small civils division. Back in 1990, when the government brought the landfill tax, we realised that we had to do something differently. At that point, if you were moving muck to landfill sites, you were getting taxed – so we moved into the more civil engineering side and we mainly do that across the Central Belt of Scotland.
Our philosophy at Malcolm’s is to be a “one-stop shop”, so we use our own resources in a lot of what we do. For example, if we go into major civil operations, we take Malcolm’s groundworkers, Malcolm’s plant hire, quarry, landfill, recycling processing – it’s heavy on infrastructure.
“Our biggest asset is our people – most of our senior team are homebred, and we can pride ourselves on our retention.”
In all fairness, there’s not a bad vehicle or plant machine out there. Yes, reliability and resilience are important, but the real difference is in the aftersales service. At Malcolm’s, we’re always looking for full-life costs. It’s one of the reasons why we always push for extended warranty. If you believe in your product, you should be able to warrant it. We started off on the smaller Wacker Neuson when they came in, and they were well accepted by the operator, so we expanded with more machines.
I think it was back in my father’s time. We dealt with Hamilton Brothers mainly as suppliers of tractors and agricultural equipment. Then obviously, we started dealing with the agricultural side of JCB. It’s a local family business just like Malcolm’s are, born and bred in the local area.
“Hamilton Brothers have a lot of strong individuals who make the business work.”
It’s the people who make the business work. As I always say, the name above the door is your entry point, the people behind it make it. I think like the Malcolm Group, Hamilton Brothers have a lot of strong individuals who most importantly understand the sector, believe in the product that they sell and give you a very straight answer to your questions.
I would say more of the same, but different. We know our strengths, and more importantly, we know our weaknesses. We’re in very challenging times and we’re coming through them reasonably well. No one likes change for the sake of change, but I think the way the world is going at the minute, more of the same is certainly not an option.
We will change in certain directions and certain areas, but we will not lose our grass roots. We’ll see what different is like when we get to that place!
Get in touch now for more information about our Construction range of machinery via email with Harry Denholm [email protected] or James Barr [email protected].
If you or someone you know has an interest in a career with the Hamilton Ross Group, please send your CV to [email protected] or visit our Indeed page.
