Shermac equipment maximises productivity for Top End Civil

Jacob Moore purchased his first grader in 2006 and worked on a number of different projects in Townsville, Queensland such as subdivisions, road, railways, tailing dams and mines. 

Fast forward to 2021. Jacob has been based in Western Australia since 2011 and his business – Top End Civil, has expanded to include trim graders and trim dozers for clients in mining and road construction. 

As the owner of a small business, Jacob wanted to optimise his productivity without compromising the quality of his work and he realised that the biggest bottleneck was water. “When trim grading” said Jacob, “you need a water cart all day long and if you are relying on other contractors, you’re reliant on them for the pace at which you can work”. 

“I decided to invest in my own water cart – the first one that Top End Civil has bought – and I immediately spoke to Shermac. I’d seen Shermac equipment, including their custom service trucks, on plenty of jobs and it always impressed me as a really good quality product.” 

“I had some well-developed thoughts about how I wanted the cart configured and Shermac made it incredibly easy. The process was fantastic – they listened to what I wanted and made a few helpful suggestions, and everything was sorted very quickly without any messing around. They stuck to the time frame for build and the cart was ready when they said it would be.

“The 8×4 cart is really well set-up. I’ve heard about how difficult other people were to deal with, but my experience with Shermac was fantastic and I got exactly what I wanted. It’s definitely the best-looking water cart I’ve seen – it’s a real head-turner and I get positive comments about it every day.” 

“While the compliments are nice, the real benefit is that I now have the best equipment and that maximises my productivity and helps me to do the best job possible.”  

“The truck has been fantastic and there is absolutely nothing I would change about the entire process of dealing with Shermac” 

After his initial experience with  Shermac,  Jacob has just ordered a service trailer from Shermac and said, “The process was just as easy second time around. It’s really refreshing to talk to people who really know what they’re doing.” 

Ready to find out more? Talk to our expert team to find out more about how custom design and concept-to-delivery engineering and manufacturing capabilities can optimise productivity and efficiency.   

The Black brothers – Todd, Dean and Marc, founded TDM Construction Ltd in 2004 and, today, the business is headquartered in Pukekohe in New Zealand’s North Island, about 50 kilometres south of Auckland.

Originally established as a small specialist drainage business, TDM has expanded its team and its services to provide a wide range of civil construction services to some of New Zealand’s largest infrastructure companies and private sector developers in the Auckland and Waikato regions.

TDM now own and operate a sizeable fleet of equipment including excavators, tractors, scrapers, graders, and telehandlers.

TDM Fleet Manager, Marc Black said “We’ve only ever invested in high quality Caterpillar and John Deere equipment, and we look after it properly. About 5 years ago, we built a trailer so our maintenance teams could transport lubricants to job sites. While it helped us get the job done, it wasn’t optimum, and we decided to spend the money to get the right equipment for the job.”

“I’d heard a bit about Shermac. They had a good reputation and I thought one of their service trailers would help make everyone’s lives much easier. I wanted the trailer to be customised and told them the oil capacities I needed, and they said, ‘no problem’ – it was very easy and straightforward.”

“When the unit arrived, everyone was blown away. It is top-of-the-line equipment, and we were very happy with it. Our on-site team love it and it enables them to present extremely professional on site.”

“The business benefits have been obvious, and our service teams are much more productive on site and get the job done much faster. Another benefit is that we’re not asking people to handle heavy drums, and that has eliminated a health and safety hazard. Everyone is very happy.”

Shermac is an Australian family-owned business, headquartered in regional WA and employing a diverse, highly skilled, and multi-cultural staff of more than 50 people. Shermac manufacture high-quality, engineered-for-purpose mobile equipment in the mining, civil and commercial sectors. 

Many businesses have a tagline and while they may sound snappy, they often have no meaning.

At Shermac, our tagline – Safety and productivity engineered in. Hazards and risks engineered out® is derived from real feedback from a customer and serves as a constant reminder to our customers and our employees about what we stand for, what dominates our thinking and how we approach every project for every customer.

Established in 2002, Shermac is an Australian family-owned business that specialises in custom-built water cartage and support vehicles for the mining, civil and commercial sectors. 

Shermac was borne out of the realisation that the operational needs and operating environments of customers were so diverse that standardised equipment did not offer them sufficient flexibility and, while customers were looking for customised equipment options, these were not available in the equipment manufacturers marketplace. 

The Shermac team has addressed the specialised requirements of our clients that demand one-off engineering solutions to operate in some of the most hostile environments on earth. For the past 20 years, we have designed, engineered and fabricated equipment for some of the worlds’ largest mining and civil engineering contractors, including BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue, Thiess, Komatsu and Alcoa.

The entire Shermac organisation is relentlessly focused on maximising operator wellbeing, vehicle uptime and productivity with outstanding build quality that ensures lowest lifetime cost of ownership.

We will not settle for anything less.

Born out of the need for high quality, engineered-for-purpose industrial vehicles and equipment, and established in 2002, Shermac is an Australian family-owned business that specialises in custom-built water cartage and support vehicles for the mining, civil and commercial sectors.

Shermac realised that the operational needs and operating environments of customers were so diverse, that standardised equipment did not offer them sufficient flexibility. While customers were looking for customised equipment options, these were not available in the equipment manufacturers marketplace.

National Sales Manager Robert Ray said, ‘While our business has been based on customisation, over the past twenty years, perhaps inevitably, certain proven and popular designs have emerged particularly around our core of service vehicles and water carts.’

‘In all our proven designs, the key design elements such as tank size, dispensing systems and vehicle configurations have the flexibility to be changed to meet the specific needs of clients’

We might get an enquiry from someone who says, “I was looking at your Mineserve 1500 and, while I like the look of it, I need additional diesel fuel capacity. Can that be done?”. Our response is typically, no problem, let me send you through some details of a unit we previously configured like that…’

‘We want our clients to know that these configuration options are usually things that we’ve done before and are quick and easy to implement but still offer clients the benefit of proven design with operational flexibility.’

‘This doesn’t mean that we’ve lost sight of our roots and we’re delighted to focus the full resources of the Shermac organisation on developing customised solutions for clients with specialised or unique requirements.’

‘With everything we build, we actively minimise design and engineering risk, delivery risk and performance risk. This means that customers get equipment that is entirely fit-for-purpose and ready to do the job it is expected to do, and they get it on-time and on-budget. We stand behind our products throughout their operational lives and are so confident in their quality that we offer an industry-leading three-year warranty.’

With a deep understanding of operating in remote areas of Australia, the Shermac team can relate to the tough conditions that customers deal with every day, and the company has unprecedented experience in fit-for-purpose and lowest cost of ownership service vehicles for mining, civil and commercial environments.  

Ready to find out more? Talk to our expert team to find out how our service vehicles can maximise utilisation and productivity and minimise business risk. Call our team on 1300 799 943 or email [email protected] with your inquiry.

9 years ago, John Gallagher arrived in Western Australia to work alongside his brother, Pete, who was working in Perth. John was looking forward to getting stuck into work but said ‘I barely knew how to hold a shovel, never mind operating heavy equipment.’ 

John was a quick learner though, and with a lot of hard work and determination, it wasn’t long before he was operating heavy machinery. Over the next few years John gained experience on bobcats, diggers, scrapers, loaders, dozers and graders. 

After establishing himself as an operator, John met his partner, Aisling, who was a nurse working in Perth. Being away for long periods was tough, and John was soon thinking about getting a job closer to home in Perth. 

Before throwing it all in, Aisling said she’d like to spend some time working alongside John in the outback. John wasted no time in making arrangements and before they knew it, Aisling had taken 6 months leave and was driving buses and rollers in the Pilbara. 

After 6 months, Aisling returned to her nursing job in Perth but couldn’t settle. She had seen possibility to get ahead in life by working up North and felt that perhaps now was the time to invest in themselves. 

In 2019, after years of hard work, John formed Rockall Pty Ltd, a plant and operator hire company and, with Aisling by his side, they purchased their first piece of equipment – a 950H wheeled loader. 

After Rockall’s first successful year in business, John felt that a water truck would be a useful acquisition as he saw plenty of opportunities on projects over the years. John had a specific vision however and wanted a multi-purpose watercart designed and equipped for any job on site. When looking for advice from friends on who would custom build a water truck, there was a common theme, ‘Talk to Shermac’. 

John met Jim Ray in Perth. John said, ‘I liked the Shermac RS2000 on an FYH 350 Isuzu chassis, but I wanted a customised unit that could do all the jobs that I saw other watercarts lacking and more’ adding ‘when I told Jim my thoughts, he said that it could all be done. It was that simple! Nothing was an issue. He was so welcoming and accommodating, and in two hours, it was fixed, and I was sold’ 

‘The whole process was fantastic. I liked the people I met in Perth and when I went to their manufacturing plant in Dalwallinu, I realised that everyone in the company is really nice, and they all have the same can-do attitude. It was a great experience.’ 

‘They really couldn’t have built a better unit. It has everything I specified to make it a really versatile piece of equipment – high, low, side and batter sprays, left and right dribble bars, self-fill setup, multi-function cannon, stabiliser setup, fire hose reel and even an enclosed pressure washer unit. Clients look at it and say, “this man has thought of everything!” 

Since delivery, the water cart, with Aisling as operator, has been busy supporting trucks, excavators, loaders, dozers, stabilisers and graders on a road build project. Aisling calls the truck ‘my new office’ and John says, ‘She just loves it!’ 

‘There’s two things I’ve learned from this whole experience. Firstly, Shermac are the go-to people for water trucks. I can’t speak highly enough of them, and it won’t be the last piece of equipment I’ll be buying from Shermac. The second thing is this; behind every good man is a great woman!’ 

Ready to find out more? Talk to our expert team to find out how our custom water truck can maximise productivity and utilisation and minimise business risk.

Some years ago, whist working as an equipment operator in Western Australia, Robert Harvey was asked by his boss if he was able to service earthmoving equipment. Robert said ‘Sure – no problem’ and his boss tossed him the keys to a Shermac service truck. Robert used the Shermac vehicle and thought ‘This is the life – if I ever get equipment of my own, I want one of these!’  

Fast forward to 2016 when Robert started HRV Group – a GPS and UTS final trim earthwork specialist business working on civil and construction projects in Victoria. By 2021, HRV Group had grown to nine units and was working on high-profile tier-1 projects such as the M80 Upgrade, Melbourne level crossing removal projects and Melbourne Airport. 

While HRV exclusively uses Caterpillar equipment, Rob likes to service his own equipment and said, ‘I like to do it myself. It makes sure I stay connected to all my assets and I know that the job has been done properly’. Rob was always very conscious of the risk of oil spills when servicing equipment on site, saying ‘When I’ve got equipment on site, I think of it as being a guest in someone else’s house and if I make a mess, I’ll never be invited back again. Loading oil drums in the back of the ute was simply too high risk, and I needed a better way’ 

‘I contacted Wayne at Shermac and while a service truck was too big for my needs, a service trailer was perfect. I looked at a few options and decided that a 3½ tonne trailer would future proof my business and give me some room to grow into with the possibility of adding extra tanks, pumps, and hose reels’. Robert did look at equipment made by competitors but added, ‘The Shermac equipment was more versatile and more eye catching, and I remembered back to my positive experiences with Shermac equipment in WA.’ 

Working with Shermac was a really good experience and once the unit went into production, I was continually sent photos of the build and that was really reassuring.’  When the trailer was completed, Robert was going to have it delivered to Victoria but his father volunteered to drive to the Shermac factory in Western Australia and collect it – ‘Dad had a really good trip and was extremely impressed by the size and scale of the shermac operation in Dalwallinu and the people he met there. They looked after him really well, explained all the details about the trailer and sent him on his way’. 

Once back in Victoria, the trailer was on site within 24 hours. Robert said, ‘I tow it to work, operate equipment all day and service a couple of units on the way home. For me it’s been a tremendous success and I estimate that the payback on my investment will be about three years. When I roll onto site with the trailer, people think “this guy knows what he’s doing” and it reinforces the fact that we’re a really professional operation’. 

‘I had a 10 out of 10 experience with Shermac. Their advice and communication were outstanding. All their staff really know what they’re doing, and I simply cannot fault them.’ 

In 1991, Ken Maher acquired a generator hire business in Melbourne, commencing with five staff. Ken’s 20 years’ experience in electrical fitting/engineering with the Victorian railways was of great assistance in developing the specialist skills required to operate a power generation business. 

Today, East Coast Generators remains a family owned and operated business and has grown to a staff of over 25 people servicing clients across Victoria, southern NSW and eastern SA. Based in Altona North, the company is Victoria’s leading specialist generator hire, sales and service business and has been helping communities, organisations and individuals to resolve their power supply problems for nearly 30 years. 

East Coast Generators has an extensive fleet of modern generators from 2kVA to 1500kVA and can produce solutions greater than 10,000kVA within 1 working day. Generators are supported by an extensive inventory of cable sets, distribution boards, extension leads, cable covers, junction boxes and transfer switches which provide customers with an ‘end to end’ solution. 

Custom Configuration

Part of this end-to-end solution includes on-site service of equipment to ensure it continues to operate at peak performance. 

Ken Maher had a service trailer but wanted a more sophisticated unit with greater capacity and started evaluating products from various suppliers. From the outset, Ken was impressed by Shermac and their products saying ‘Shermac presented themselves similarly to the way we present to our client base and that immediately made me feel very comfortable with them. We anticipated a long service life for the service trailer and based our decision making on value and quality.’  

Ken added, ‘We wanted to specify the trailer to suit our needs – this involved the configuration and capacity of tanks and hose reel configurations’ adding, ‘Shermac made the configuration process straightforward and seamless, and I was very happy with my interactions with the Shermac design team’. 

‘The trailer was delivered on-time and as-specified and being able to deliver more efficient and effective on-site service, the expected benefits have been realised’. 

‘The whole experience with Shermac was excellent. I was very pleased with our dealings with them, and they really performed very well’. 

KEE Group is a unique WA family-owned and multi-faceted civil and mining support services provider with four divisions: 

KEE Hire: Full-service provision with an inventory of over 600 pieces and growing 

KEE Transport: A 24/7 service provider that will deliver what is promised Australia wide 

KEE Surfacing: Exceptional quality asphalt, spray seal, profiling and base course services and a demonstrated capacity of delivering the largest projects. 

KEE Fuel: Discounted onsite delivery direct to machinery and bulk tanks 

Co-founder Damon Spiers said ‘Above absolutely everything else we do, we want to be known as Australia’s leading civil, mining and construction support service. We want our clients to know that we can offer the complete package from plant and equipment supply, to fueling, maintenance and transportation’, and added ‘we do this by utilising the industry’s best and brightest to deploy the highest possible quality equipment and solutions, enabling our clients to efficiently and safely achieve their goals’ 

‘We are mindful that project managers are looking for the simplest solutions without compromising on quality. This is what gives us the edge. Offering a comprehensive range of services, there’s no reason to go elsewhere or contact a range of different providers’ 

When evaluating suppliers to his business, Damon said, ‘We only work with suppliers that genuinely share our worldview and they need to stand behind their product. We like to work with Shermac. We have an alignment of values and a very similar ethos to Shermac. They are a successful business, a great company to work with and, simply, nice people’ 

Damon added, ‘Shermac are not always the cheapest but for overall service provision and value for money, they are the standout supplier. I’m over dealing with suppliers that don’t deliver. We never have any issues with Shermac. They produce an exceptional product and provide exceptional support. Our customers get the best, and we chose to work with Shermac because they are the best’ 

Jasen Kehl started his working life operating farm equipment on potato farms in South Australia as a teenager before moving on to operate earth moving equipment in Victoria and later Western Australia. After several years as a grader operator, he was offered the opportunity to become an owner operator. 

In 2009, Jakk Contracting was established by Jasen and his wife Kate. The company specialises in final trim grading with a strong focus on safety, quality and efficiency. While Jasen and Kate have continued to base their family in North West Victoria, Jakk Contracting works predominantly in the Pilbara region of WA and has been a key contributor on many projects in the resource sector including roads, rail, airstrips and other large-scale pavement surfaces. 

As a business owner, Jasen looked for opportunities to increase his productivity and quickly realised that having a water cart for final trim grading available on demand was critical. Jasen looked at lots of water carts and saw nothing on the market that met his needs. As a result, he started thinking about the water cart he wanted and how this might be configured and set up. 

Realising that this would have to be a custom-build, Jasen started looking for businesses to work with. In 2012, Jasen was introduced to Jim Ray at Shermac. According to Jasen, “Jim was the first fabricator who didn’t try and shoe-horn me into a standard design. He only talked about what I wanted and how I could get it. Shermac were very happy to customise a design to meet my requirements and build me the unit that I wanted, so I stopped talking to people who bulk-build standard units”. 

Jasen is a long-time admirer of Kenworth products and wanted Shermac to mount the water tank on a Kenworth chassis. The chassis was heavily modified with customised engine, differentials, transmission and an upgraded hydraulic system to cater for water delivery requirements. 

Jasen commented “There was a lot of work behind the scenes – Shermac had to work with Kenworth engineers to ensure the hydraulic system could power the water delivery system that I wanted” 

He was delighted with the end-result and said “Owning my own water cart and having a reliable supply of water available as and when I needed it resulted in massive increases in grader productivity for me and my clients” 

The focus on productivity propelled the growth of Jakk Contracting and the business now has five graders and two dedicated water carts. While Jasen has since sold his first water cart, he noted “The unit worked 23,000 hours in extremely harsh environments and met every requirement that I had, and when I sold it, it still looked like new” 

After his initial experience with Shermac, Jasen has returned for two further water cart builds, including a semi tanker that was delivered in 2020. 

Jasen said “Working with Shermac is a pleasure. They have a genuine can-do attitude and believe that anything can be achieved. They took all my ideas on board and complemented them with some clever thinking of their own” and added “there were a lot of issues that they faced with my requirements that probably caused them some challenges, but they just got on with the job quietly and efficiently”. 

Hastings Deering are delighted with their new custom service trailers from Shermac. The company operates over QLD and the NT, with around 500 field service vehicles and 3,500 staff in operation. With sites such as drilling camps and coal-seam gas stations, often located in harsh and remote terrains, they need service vehicles built to cope. The company found their former maintenance trucks were no longer up for the purpose, being time-consuming to load and unload, unclean in terms of their greater capacity for spillages and expensive to run. They needed a solution, and Shermac came up with the perfect answer – timesaving and user-friendly self-contained service trailers. 

When their old service trucks were retired, Field Service Supervisor, Casey Dallas, saw the opportunity to approach Shermac. Hastings Deering has purchased several off-the-shelf Shermac service trucks in the past for various business areas. Knowing this plus Shermac’s leading reputation and reliability in the industry, Casey trusted Shermac to deliver a tailored solution to fit the company’s business requirement in expanding Toowoomba’s service requirements way out to their Roma base and beyond – up to 600kms away. Having done research across several companies, he found Shermac to be not only comparable in price, but the most flexible in terms of the level of customisation they could offer. With 120 employees and 30 field vehicles, Casey approached Shermac to provide 3 new custom service trailers. 

Casey was really impressed with Shermac in terms of their proactivity and flexibility to accommodate Hastings Deering’s every need: “They were really good at being flexible and were happy to change anything that needed to be changed.” This included one trailer customised to hold a high-pressure cleaner and water tank, and another specifically tailored to service power generators. 

Shermac definitely delivered on their client’s environmental requirements, too. Multiple fully-sealed compartments of varying volume-size for various fuels were added along with dedicated hosereels. This removed any chance of spillage onsite. Environmental safety is a huge consideration for all their sites, and Hastings Deering always work closely with landowners to protect and respect the land they work on.  

Along with providing a tough, durable vehicle set up perfectly to carry everything needed for several days’ work out in the field, Shermac provided trailers that were much lighter to tow. Thinking through all the safe towing aspects, Shermac put forward and fitted out lighter poly tanks for carrying hydrocarbons – now fitted as standard across the Hastings Deering trailer fleet – and lighter doors, allowing a weight saving of at least 200kg per trailer, giving greater weight capacity for fuels and tools. 

Delivered on time, on budget and perfectly matched to their needs – branding included – Hastings Deering are delighted with their Shermac service trailers and the increase in their business productivity through significant time-savings in loading and unloading. Now their teams can be far more efficient, getting jobs done quicker and being able to move onto other jobs sooner.  

Call us at Shermac today on 1300 799 943 to discuss how we can tailor the most efficient, safe and highest quality engineered-for-purpose industrial vehicles and equipment for your needs.