Kocurek's business booms

by Ian Brown



Have you got an excavator which isn't fully utilised? If you had a system which allowed alternative uses would it be helpful? Yes - then you'd be well advised to ring Kocurek Excavators.

Kocurek is the Ipswich-based outfit which builds the long-reach booms/dippers beloved of local drainage boards and the Environment Agency. And a number of enlightened aggregates producers who have realised that finding competent operators for a dragline is nigh on impossible - hydraulic excavator operators are more plentiful.

Kocurek builds specialist booms/attachments for demolition excavators too with the aim of giving long reach - only this time it's vertically inclined. If you see a long-reach demolition excavator by Samsung, Fiat-Hitachi, Daewoo or Halla it's a fair bet it was modified by Kocurek.

How did all of this come about? Simple really, David Kocurek saw a niche in the market, and decided to exploit it. Just 20 years ago he and his mother Rita started a plant hire company specialising in long-reach excavators. The first one modified was a 3.5t Hinamoto and it was successfully used in the hire fleet by several water authorities. Since then there have been few makes of excavator that haven't passed through the workshop for major front-end surgery. While CJ visited there were models from Cat, JCB, Liebherr and Fiat-Hitachi in progress - from several customers too, including quite a few demolition specialists, as well as the Egyptian Water Authority.

"Our huge advantage over OEM suppliers is that we can give a well-engineered, proven product coupled with a fast delivery time," says David Kocurek. "Because we have so much specialist experience there aren't many problems we haven't overcome before. And because we operate our own hire fleet we know the demands hirers have to meet.

"We've seen prospective customers' eyes go glazed when they get a delivery estimate of, say, 26 weeks. That's half a year away. Although, as you can see our workshops are pretty full just now, we do turn cartwheels to help people if we can."

It's true, Kocurek people work weekends and evenings to keep the production process going as fast as possible. "We make as much as we can of what we need ourselves," continues Kocurek, "that means hydraulic cylinders, buckets and even nuts and bolts. We even generate our own on-site electricity."

Now that's dedication. But it pays - Kocurek's kit is known and respected throughout the industry.

Yet David Kocurek is not motivated by greed or ravening ambition to feed his ego. "We like to do the best job we can for our customers," he says quietly, "and I'd like to think we've never actually lost one because we let them down."

Strong words from a man with a different philosophy than the average get-rich-quick merchant.

Kocurek's latest winner is the modular joint. He noticed that it can quite often take a couple of days to change an excavator front-end from demolition rig to conventional or vice-versa. So he designed the hydraulically-actuated modular joint which allows users to make the equipment change in 30 minutes. And it's going down a storm.