With 31 years of experience in the heavy equipment industry, no one has been better placed than Craig Doran, Managing Director of ASV Sales & Service and CEG Distributions, to ride the wave of success that ASV has experienced through its pioneering of the Posi-track system. At a time when the industry had yet to even come up with a name for the concept.
ASV Sales & Service was founded in 2007, and originally began as a retail distributor of ASV Posi-Track loaders providing sales, service, spares and eventually rentals.
ASV Sales & Service operated out of a premise on the Central Coast of New South Wales for five years until they outgrew the property in 2012, and moved to their current location in Newcastle, at Beresfield.
This move provided ASV Sales & Service with about three times the space. Shortly after, they purchased a 6500 square metre workshop and storage area to increase their capacity for new machine and parts storage, and to expand the rental division.
Today, ASV Sales & Service operates out of four locations nationally with a head office shared with its sister company CEG Distributions in Newcastle, a separate dedicated service and rental facility in Newcastle, and branches in Perth and the Sunshine Coast. ASV Sales & Service accounts for approximately half of ASV’s sales in Australia and is the largest retail dealer for ASV Posi-Track globally. Since growing the business from offering only ASV Posi-Track loaders, they now offer three main brands having acquired distribution rights for Eurocomach mini excavators, and Fecon vegetation management machines and attachments.
In recent years, rental has grown to become a significant portion of the ASV Sales & Service business. Now with the introduction of ASV Rentals, the company owns and operates more than 150 rental machines nationwide. ASV Rentals caters mainly to long term rentals with a very high percentage of customers eventually purchasing new equipment.
Craig Doran is the Managing Director of ASV Sales & Service and CEG Distributions. He has literally grown up around heavy equipment and has been professionally involved in the industry his entire working life. His career started off as an apprentice plant fitter and machinist in 1986 at a company called Brecketts, which was doing reclamation work at the local BHP factory.
At the time, his father Ted Doran also owned a company called Carrington Steel, which specialised in steel fabrication and provided mobile cranes and elevated work platforms along with wet and dry hire services to Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. In 1989, he and his business partners identified an opportunity in the market to start an earthmoving equipment supply company in the area, and Carrington Equipment was started. Considering his background, he moved into the new family business as a fitter and field service mechanic and then progressed to a service manager role.
Their first product line was Furukawa wheel loaders and within two years it grew to the number one selling wheel loader in their area.
The success in that product line opened up new and exciting doors to acquire other coming next. Samsung was later acquired by Volvo, so they found themselves looking for other brands, which led them to acquire the rights to distribute Daewoo/Doosan, as well as Matbro telehandlers. Over time, they had the opportunity to become dealers for other brands including JCB, Hyundai and eventually ASV Posi-Track loaders.
In 2002, they expanded the business and opened a dealership in Sydney, which Craig then managed.
Within a few years, ASV Posi-Track sales became a greater portion of the total business. At that time, Posi-Tracks weren’t as widely sold as wheeled skid steers, so they really pioneered the market and quickly became the number one selling CTL, before the industry even had a name for one – that’s why tracked machines are often referred to as Posi-Tracks. ASV were the first to introduce the concept and they are still market leaders today.
In 2007 they had an opportunity to take over national distribution of ASV Posi-Track, so Craig left Carrington Equipment to form CEG Distributions, which remains the national distributor of the product today. At the same time, they opened three additional retail locations and formed ASV Sales & Service with branches in Newcastle, the Sunshine Coast and Perth.
Craig shared, “ASV Sales & Service is a family owned business, employing 50 people.
It’s very much a team environment with a lot of our employees having been with us since the beginning, or having worked with the family before ASV Sales & Service was started. Although he’s retired, my father Ted Doran is still very active in the business, and my sister Gina Roberts is also a vital part of the accounting and administration team.
“We have always put a lot of importance on parts availability, and backup and support.
Our business supports a field population of over 6500 ASV and Terex Posi-Track loaders in Australia. We take a lot of pride in providing very high uptime and over-the-counter parts fill rate that exceeds 95 per cent. We understand that when we have a customer with a machine down, it can have a big impact on their business, so we have always made it priority to minimise the frustration of waiting for parts to arrive from overseas, which is why our central parts warehouse maintains over 70,000 parts on the shelf.”
One problem that often arises in the earthmoving equipment industry is when people or businesses make decisions based on the cheapest price rather than the machine that best suits their needs, which often ends in people coming to Craig and ASV with basically new machines that aren’t up to the tasks required. It is important before making any purchasing decisions to look at the whole of life costs for a machine, including running and service costs as well as resale value.
ASV Sales & Service has well laid plans to continue to diversify and expand their products and service offerings to ultimately become a true one-stop-shop their customers.
[colored_box color=”yellow”]For more information visit www.asvaus.com[/colored_box]