Pieter Dolfsma
Eigenaar, Dolco Verhuur
We are a small company, but big in cranes.
In conversation with
Dolco rental Dolco is rental in the broadest sense. We are a small company, but large in cranes that can be operated without a lifting certificate. Large in comparison to our competitors. We initially had a roofing business where we occasionally rented out machines. In 2001, I sold it, and we decided to focus purely on the rental market. Over the years, this has grown into what Dolco is today. During that time, we hired our third employee, and now we have about 30 employees.
The start with Hoeflon "I was looking for a compact crane, but it didn't exist back then. In 2005, I went to Bauma in Munich to find someone who was working on compact cranes. Someone tipped me off and said there was someone in Barneveld who had bought track chassis and was going to build something on them. Later, I visited Gert when he was tinkering in a building that didn’t even have a roof yet. We were one of the first customers. We bought the first machines and since then, we've purchased the newer versions each time."
Why Hoeflon? At that time, there weren't many brands. There were more prototypes, but they didn’t look great. They were too square, too wide, or too bulky. It wasn’t as compact as a Hoeflon. We had another machine from a different brand, but we later sold it. The machine was technically fine, but we consciously chose Hoeflon again because it’s easier to use for rental purposes."
As a company, you also need to have enough cranes, there's no time anymore. Customers call today and need a crane tomorrow.
Rising demand "Because the cranes are often rented out individually, it's not really visible. We never have projects where the crane stays in place for a long time. Now, we have some capacity available to take on jobs with an operator. Professionals come to us more often than freelancers. It also happens that we rent out cranes to other Hoeflon customers if they are short on equipment. We are still gradually expanding our customer base. We're not very active in the market with representatives, as our established reputation and expertise ensure the machines get rented out anyway. The cranes are often used for steel construction, glass installation, machine placement, or internal relocations."
Electric machines "I really appreciate that the Hoeflon machines are electric. I think there's a lot of growth potential in this. We notice that people often prefer electric machines because they produce less noise on the job site."
Service "We handle most of the crane maintenance ourselves. Since we've been working with Hoeflon from the beginning, we know quite a bit about them. If there's something we don't know, we have a very short line of communication with the service department, so we always manage to sort things out."
The future of Dolco "I don't see Dolco growing much more. Maybe we'll change things up a bit. We really like the crane side of the business, and the competition is getting bigger. We'll probably focus more on that. We've been in this field for years now. As a company, you also need to have enough cranes; there's no more time to waste. Customers call today and need a crane by tomorrow."
Any fun anecdotes? "We were probably the trendsetters for the C10. I told Gert we needed a larger one, but he said he wasn’t going to do that. A few months later, he called me to say he was going to start building it. Of course, we encountered a few teething problems, but then we worked together to improve them."