Plant news in brief - 23 July 2008

UK Forks' parent company Vp has acquired the tools and telehandler fleet of UCS Plant, part of the Rand Group, for £0.9m. It has also signed a three year sole-supply agreement with Rand's subsidiaries UCS Civils and Linpave Building for the hire of tools and other specialist equipment.

Website comparecontracthire.com aims to eliminate the hassle and guesswork from evaluating contract hire options when sourcing a new van. It provides a range of monthly prices on two, three or four-year contracts (inclusive or exclusive of maintenance) for vehicles covering either 10,000 or 20,000 miles per year.

Cranes 4 Work is a new company specialising in the supply of self-erecting cranes set up by Chris Noble, managing director of Yorkshire-based Noble Homes. It supplies a range of pedestrian-operated cranes both for hire and sale, which can be erected, fully tested and ready to work within a day.

Oxford-based OxLok is using TomTom Work vehicle tracking and navigation with its Webfleet Asset Alert monitoring system for plant. This gives a system that not only tracks and monitors the location of items of plant, but can also communicate with people and machinery on the move.

Caterpillar has sold its 100,000th mini hydraulic excavator - an exclusive silver machine - to German company Matthäi. Cat builds minis in Japan and Desford in the UK, where backhoe loaders and small wheel loaders are also assembled.

The largest Ruthmann truck-mounted access platform supplied to the UK has been delivered to Halifax-based Haven Building & Maintenance by Access Sales International. The 45m working height machine has 30m of outreach is and the third Ruthmann in Haven's fleet.