Huski Skid steers

Huski Skid steers a ‘hire’ learning for expanding business

A growing equipment hire business specialising in tight-access machinery has recently added Toyota Huski’s smallest skid steer loader to its fleet.

Based in Austral, in greater south-western Sydney, DMD Hire recently purchased a new Toyota Huski 4SDK4 skid steer loader to boost and diversify its existing fleet, after the fledgling equipment hire business started receiving unexpectedly high demand.

As DMD Hire co-owner, Dom Sgro, explained, DMD Hire started out as his side-business for Mr Sgro in 2020, yet rapidly took on a life of its own.

“The business started off with just me,” said Dom. “I bought a 1.7 tonne excavator to get rid of some tax money and I figured I’d just hire it out. It was doing quite well as a side-business to my main mechanical business, Dom’s Plant Repairs.

“Initially, I ran the excavator skid steer loader through my mechanical business. Then I was talking with my brothers-in-law about it and they suggested getting into the tight-access market. There weren’t that many people around doing it, aside from the big hire companies, so I thought ‘it’s not a bad idea’ and we put the excavator into a new business, together.

“My brother-in-law, Mitchell, does all the admin and running around, and my other brother-in-law, Dylan, does a lot of mechanical stuff with me. Being Dom, Mitchell and Dylan, we called it DMD Hire and as our customer interest picked up we started adding more machines. We have seven at present.

Dom examined the market for tight-access skid steer loaders and quickly narrowed his choice to a Toyota Huski from Toyota Material Handling Australia.

When Huski Construction Equipment area sales manager — Construction, Peter Bower, met Dom for the first time that although he hadn’t purchased a Huski skid steer loader before, he already knew a lot about them.

“Dom is a young guy with a young family and he was looking to expand his hire business, which was already doing really well,” said Peter. “He was looking for a quality addition to his fleet and decided on spending

a bit more on a Huski rather than a cheaper brand, because he knew that in the long term he would recover his investment costs.

“His hire business customers do a lot of work on new housing development sites which have big houses but not much yard, in which case access for landscaping works is very tight. So our smallest skid steer loader, the SDK4, was a no-brainer. But, apart from size dictating the selection, Dom has had experience working on Huskis as part of his job as a plant mechanic. This helped influence his decision in as far as he was aware of Huskis’ simplicity to work on, ruggedness, and reputation for durability.”

Dom, a trained plant mechanic, agreed that his job experience helped make buying his Huski an easier choice. “I’ve worked on heavy equipment all around the country and seen a lot of different types and brands of machinery,” he said.

“Working on the mechanical side of the business, I have had quite a bit to do with Toyota Huski skid steer loaders. My good mate is a landscaper and he has a 2013 model Huski 4SDK4. He gives it no love whatsoever but it keeps running and running, and running. It hardly ever broke but eventually, because of its extreme workload and age, I ended up rebuilding the engine and have since done servicing and minor repairs on it.

“One of the main reasons I like Huskis is that they are straight-forward to work on. There’s nothing overly complicated about them, you can see exactly what you’re dealing with and there’s hardly any electrical involved. It’s basic and it’s logical, which makes it easy to work on and fix. And because it’s not complicated, things are less likely to go wrong in the first place. I think that’s a big part of Toyota Huski’s reputation for reliability.

“So those experiences definitely influenced my decision to buy a Huski for our own fleet. When it came to a sit-down skid steer loader, we knew what we were after so we just got on with it and bought it, outright.

“Another reason is that the 4SDK4 is economically priced for what it can do.

“It needed to be a small machine to suit our target market. The project homes our customers work around are getting bigger, leaving hardly any access on the boundaries, so you can’t fit big machines through there. At only 900mm in width, the 4SDK4 is ideal for those jobs.”

Dom is particularly impressed by his little Huski’s work performance. “Even though it’s small, its power is amazing,” he said. It works really well in terms of its operation. It’s not just narrower, it’s a lot quicker — its productivity is vastly superior to our little stand-ons.”

Mr Sgro said customers are already appreciating the option of the sit-down Huski over stand-on skid steer loaders. “The Huski works really well in the mix of our other machines, providing more options for our customers,” said Dom. “We had a customer wanting another brand of skid steer loader but it was too wide for his job so we gave him the Huski.

“He came back rapt, saying he moved about 15 tonnes of dirt in about two hours and figured he’d have easily been another two hours onsite with a stand-on machine. We were happy to get such good feedback.”

Since purchasing his Toyota Huski, Dom said he hasn’t had much need of help from Huski Construction Equipment because, as a mechanic, he services his machine himself. His 4SDK4 has only 200 hours on it, so far. “But support from Toyota Huski has been good,” he said. “We have appreciated Peter’s honesty, throughout. We’ll definitely be giving him a call when it comes time to adding another Huski to our fleet in the future.”

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