Ernest Doe celebrating 750 Thwaites dumper sales with the one-off Siliver Machine.

I was delighted this February that once again Thwaites was very much part of the annual Doe Show in Maldon, Essex, now in its 57th year.

Thwaites and Ernest Doe have a special, established relationship which started in the early 1950’s, when the very first Thwaites dumper was built at our factory in Leamington Spa and Ernest Doe were distributors covering Essex and East London. Those early pioneering years were very fruitful. I recently reviewed the sales ledger for this period (yes we still keep them all) and the records show Ernest Doe bought over 500 Thwaites dumpers in those early years.

The first machine sold in 1952 was the Thwaites three-wheeler – back in those days we produced just the one product. It was powered by a Petter AVA2 air-cooled diesel engine and the gravity tip skip had a payload of 30 cwt, which was the preferred design of the decade. Just recently an original machine was discovered, which my team of engineers have lovingly restored at the factory. The machine pictured was in fact displayed and indeed operated at this year’s show, drawing a great deal of interest. It now takes pride of place in our reception for all our visitors to see.

Whilst Thwaites and Ernest Doe went our separate ways for a number of years, our relationship was revived in 2012. Since then we have seen dumper sales escalate to the point where we are delighted to recognise the sale of the 750th Dumper to Ernest Doe. To mark this milestone we produced a one-off Silver Machine to be exhibited and operated around the construction demonstration plot at the recent show.The Silver 6 Tonne dumper is now in high demand and we look forward to announcing who has bought the Silver Dream Dumper in due course.This is a magnificent achievement by Ernest Doe, who builds great relationships with, and offers a first class service to contractors large and small. It is in fact those Small Medium Enterprise customers that have swelled the numbers to achieve the 750th dumper sale in just 4 years.

Here at Thwaites (founded by Basil Thwaites back in 1937) we remain a privately owned specialist manufacturer of dumpers. We continue to invest in state of the art manufacturing machinery, which includes new IGM robot welders and a Bystronic Byspirit Pro 3015 laser profiler.

Because every machine sold will have been totally built in our factory, we can control the quality of our in-house manufacturing. It means our end product has a consistently high level of reliability, which is ultimately what every customer wants from their Thwaites dumper.Congratulations to Ernest Doe on both another spectacular Doe Show and your sales of 750 Thwaites Dumpers so far.