A machine goes down on a project site five hours from the nearest town. The crew is standing around. The schedule is slipping by the hour.

That is the moment you find out what your equipment supplier is really made of. Not when you sign the quote. When something breaks a long way from anywhere.

“We understand downtime hurts,” says Shane Cash, Account Manager at Ezyquip. “If there’s a problem with a machine, we’re there. We’ve used planes to fly parts out to remote jobs. We’ve done it in the past, and we’ll probably do it again.”

Shane has spent 14 years at Ezyquip and more than 20 in the industry. He works out of four of our five branches: Brisbane, Toowoomba, Roma and Dubbo. Few people see more of the network from the inside, so we asked him to walk us through it. Here is what he told us about each branch, what they share, and what that means for your job.

Meet the five branches

Ezyquip runs five branches across Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. Each has its own branch manager and its own local focus. Each one runs to the same standard.

Toowoomba: where it started

Toowoomba is where Ezyquip was born, and Shane calls it the heartbeat of the company. It has a staff of close to 20, including a transport office, an accounts team and a large service crew run by Brooke Parkinson.

It is also where most of our major rebuilds and major works are done, and branch manager Graham Forbes has more than 20 years in the industry.

Roma: the branch that stayed

Roma sits in the heart of the Surat Basin and looks after the Maranoa region. It is our western Queensland hub, backing mining, gas and civil jobs out that way, and servicing the gear on site. Branch manager Stephen Lowry runs a team of nine.

When the gas boom kicked off around 2010, everyone rushed out west. When it wound down around 2015, a lot of them left. “Our branch stayed,” Shane says. Ten years on, Roma is still there, and there is a second wave of work coming through. “It’s very busy out there.”

Brisbane: head office

Our Brisbane head office at Wacol is home to the leadership team: Managing Director Denis Gardner, CEO Clayton Evans and Area Manager Kevin Woods. Branch manager Travis Oakes also runs our drilling division, which Shane calls “a business within a business”.

Dubbo: built for what is coming

Dubbo is our smallest branch, and it has been in town for around eight years. It is gearing up for the wind and solar farms planned across the region, so it can support the companies that win those builds. That is why renewables are a big part of where this branch is heading.

Darwin: the biggest of the lot

Darwin is our biggest branch. We opened it around 12 years ago, and it took time to be accepted.

“You have to be there a while to earn your stripes,” Shane says. “It took us a while, but we’re well accepted. We’re local, and we’re one of the significant players up there.”

One standard, wherever you are

So what stays the same across five branches, two states and a territory?

“The level of attention to our customers, and the service.”

It comes back to downtime. Every hour a machine sits idle costs you money. So when something goes wrong, every branch treats it as the priority. Sometimes that means hours of driving to get parts on site. More than once, it has meant a plane.

Getting you running again is the standard. The branch you deal with does not change that.

Beyond the branches: reaching remote Australia

The branches are the base, not the boundary. Some of our work sits five, six or seven hours from a branch, and plenty goes further.

We have had gear working at Mount Isa and at several mines across Central Queensland. From Dubbo, we supplied a fleet to the Kingston Resources Mineral Hill mine, a couple of hours out of town, with regular on-site maintenance visits built into the package. Out of Darwin, we work on some of the most remote sites in the Territory, including the Tanami and the McArthur River project.

How far will we go? “Really, we’ll go anywhere,” Shane says. “We’ll make it work.”

If your job is a long way from the nearest town, have a look at our mining gear. Remote work is what we do.

The one thing to remember

If you remember one thing about Ezyquip, Shane hopes it is the name. The EZY is the point.

“It’s easy to work with us,” he says. “I’d like to think we make the process easy for our clients.”

That comes from listening first. “Often the client knows more than you about what you’re chasing,” Shane says. “So you listen, you learn, and you find the product for them.”

In practice, no two jobs look the same. Some clients look after their own gear. Others want us to handle it. On some projects that means a fitter on site on a rolling seven-on, seven-off roster, so the site has a fitter on hand for the life of the project.

“Different machines, different environments,” Shane says. “Every job’s different, so you need to listen and learn from it.”

That is what one standard across five branches gives you. The same care and the same response, shaped around your job.

The people behind each branch

Talk to Shane for five minutes and you notice something. Name after name has been with Ezyquip for ten years or more. Stephen in Roma. Denis, Clayton and Kevin at head office. Travis in Brisbane.

“You’re going to hear me say that a lot,” he says. “Good companies attract good people.”

Most of our branches sit in country towns, and Shane reckons that is no accident. “We’re sort of born from the country, and we’re happy to be in the country.” We sponsor junior football and try to be part of the town. In Dubbo, Shane is the only one who is not from the area. The rest of the team live and breathe the region they work in.

Where we can, we employ locals. But remote work is remote, and a mine site in the Tanami does not come with a town full of fitters next door. On those jobs our people travel out to you, with the nearest branch and the rest of the network behind them.

Got a job a long way from anywhere?

Roma is in its second wave. Dubbo is getting ready for renewables. Darwin has grown a long way from its early days. The network is still building, and so is the work it supports.

Tell us where your job is. Whether it is down the road from a branch or a day’s drive past it, you get the same Ezyquip standard. Call us on 1300 399 784, or find your nearest branch.