After 14 years spent building a recognised vehicle hire business in the north-west, Sean and Lisa Clarke – owners of McLaren Hire – have decided it’s time for a change.
The couple this week rebranded their business to become McLaren’s Raw Hire – a name and image which Mr Clarke told WA Business News reflected the business broadening its focus on to heavier equipment, while also paying tribute to the ‘raw’ environment which had played host to the husband and wife duo’s success.
In just two years the Karratha-based business has doubled the size of its fleet from 500 to more than 1000.
At the end of last year it also won contracts with Chevron to supply vehicles for the big Wheatstone and Gorgon LNG projects.
While the Wheatstone project is still in its early stages, McLaren has begun supplying vehicles for Gorgon and expects the number to reach about 200 by the end of 2012.
Those vehicles include heavier machinery such as four-wheel drive buses, but also water carts, which are in high demand to keep the levels of dust down during the construction of new projects.
Both contracts with Chevron are expected to run for at least three years, which has given McLaren the stability needed to build on the company’s branches in Karratha and Port Hedland.
“We’ve got expansions planned for other branches in the pipeline – further afield,” Mr Clarke said. “We are growing quite rapidly still, over the next couple of years we’re going to continue to grow fairly much at that rate without going silly.”
Mr Clarke said he worked hard to keep the fleet updated by selling vehicles after three years or 100,000km, which was made possible through a strong relationship with its vehicle suppliers.
The company opened a corporate administrative office in Perth almost a year ago to make it more accessible to clients, but to also take advantage of a richer pool of potential employees who were perhaps unwilling to relocate to regional Western Australia.
The Clarkes have remained in Karratha, however, which Mr Clarke said did present some difficulties, but overall it was seen as a positive “hands-on” approach.
The biggest challenge the company faced was sourcing vehicles at a rate which would keep up with demand – an issue that had been affected by a run of natural disasters in Japan and Thailand.
“We’re still feeling the effects today, we still can’t get the supply we’d like so it’s something that we have to work through with our clients … it’s a difficult time in that instance,” Mr Clarke said.
The Clarkes are previous WA Business News 40under40 award winners and the business was also named business of the year in the 2010 GWN Western Australian Regional Small Business Awards.
But despite the success, Mr Clarke said competition was fierce and continuing to grow; it had always competed with larger companies such as Avis, Budget and Thrifty, but a lot of smaller players had also entered the market to get in on the action.
Mr Clarke said McLaren’s point of difference was that it had the widest range of vehicles in the north-west and so was a “one-stop shop” for clients.
In terms of what McLaren would become in the future, Mr Clarke said the business was fortunate in that it was young and dynamic and had a team behind it with similar characteristics.
“The sky’s the limit to be honest with this company … where to? That is the question. We’ve got a great opportunity in the country that we’re living and playing in and the company has definitely got a long way to go yet in a lot of different areas,” he said.
