With the sad passing of company founder Ben Donoghue this summer, London waste management company P.B. Donoghue is moving into a new era, whilst also staying fully committed to build even further on its reputation for outstanding service to its customers.
“My father started the company over 50 years ago” says Ben’s elder son Peter, “and built it up with relentless dedication and an unwavering commitment to excellence. The company we are today is the result of his leadership, visionary outlook and personal interest in everyone around him, whether family, employees or clients.”
Reflecting those earlier times, Thompsons recently produced a new tipper body for a fully refurbished 1970’s Ford D Series six wheeler – not to a current Thompsons body design but rather one to mirror exactly the type of body that the truck would have originally carried.
Back in those days, tipper bodies were typically constructed in steel with multi-piece floors and ribbed side panels. The virtues of simplicity, practicality and ease of repair were what really counted!
As the unofficial star of the P.B.Donoghue fleet, VRL 694S is a true one-off, and has earned it’s right not to have to go out on daily work. Rather, two new Thompsons 8×4 tippers have joined the fleet to expand that role, one a Volvo FMX, the other a Mercedes Arocs.
“In our current fleet, we have a variety of chassis” says Peter Donoghue, “but the tippers all run with Thompsons Loadmasters. With tippers, it’s their bodies that take the brunt of the hard work, and whilst we’ve had other bodies nothing really compares with the Loadmaster. We’ve run them for years, without issue. And as time moves on with new technologies, they actually get better still. We can send our trucks out on any job whatsoever and never give a moment’s thought about what they are going to carry. It’s simply ‘job done, each time, every time’.”
Always a North London operator, P.B.Donoghue now has a second operating centre in Watford, the combined locations offering a huge range of services both locally and nationwide including standard tippers, grabs, skips, hookloaders, ‘wait and load’ (where you can’t drop and leave a skip) and plant transport. All vehicles carry a wide range of safety devices making them ideal for working in urban environments, with the fleet fully accredited to the highest FORS Gold standard.
Reflecting upon his own company’s decades – long association with P.B.Donoghue, Thompsons Joint Managing Director Scott Burton says “our relationship with P.B. Donoghue goes back to the early 1970s when my father Allan started selling some of Thompsons’ very first bodies to Ben. Our company had its earliest roots in Ireland as well, so there was an obvious connection, one that blossomed and strengthened over the years.
Ben was an outstanding ambassador for our entire industry having a reputation which we are sure will continue to be enhanced in the future under the leadership of the next generation of directors and management team at P.B. Donoghue. We wish them all our very best.”
