Farmers supply over 70% of the diesel we use — Antrim contractor

Having started his contracting enterprise at the age of 17 in 2007, Darragh Rutledge has built up a well-known and well-regarded business in Northern Ireland.

Located five miles from Lisburn in Co Antrim, Darragh has put together a very clean fleet of equipment in less than two decades. Cool as a breeze, Darragh runs a very busy operation, with work for a team of seven all year round.

The main focus is on silage and slurry works, with reseeding, livestock and tillage farming, digging, fencing, a small bit of civils and a specialised slurry kit service and retail business ensuring the team are kept on their feet.

“When I was 17, I started baling for some neighbours, using my father’s machinery. At that same time, a local compost company needed a lot of compost to be drew to fields and spread. I took on this work, and it proved to be very busy, and it really kick started my contracting business.

"When I was 18, I bought a new muck spreader. The following year, a local contractor got out of pit silage, and I bought my first forage wagon. Since then, I have grown the business over time”, outlined Darragh.

Today, Rutledge Contracts run two balers (McHale Fusion 3 Plus and a Fendt Rotana Combi), three forage wagons (two Pottinger Jumbo 7400’s and a Strautmann Giga Vitesse 3602) and a fleet of slurry tankers, a nurse tank and an umbilical system.

Outside of tasks like reseeding, sowing corn, spreading dung etc, the business has four excavators, from three tonnes up to fourteen tonnes.

The silage is pushed up with a JCB 419S, and the team of tractors extends to include five Fendt’s (four 718s and a 516) and a John Deere 6175, which has just been upgraded for a John Deere 6M 180, with a CVT transmission.

“When you sit back and look at it, contractors provide farmers a top-class service at very keen rates. A contractor will come into your yard with a tractor worth £150,000 and an implement behind worth anywhere up to £100,000 and let’s just say work for £55-£70/hour.

“If you take any other skilled tradesperson, they are now almost looking for similar rates, with a minimal investment in tools in comparison. Contractors need farmers, but farmers also need contractors.”

“Farmers would supply over 70% of our annual diesel usage. This is very much the norm in our local area with all contractors.

“It’s a big help with cash flow, it means we aren’t carrying huge costs, and having to go to our farmer clients with huge bills. For pit silage work, farmers would supply about 90% of the fuel we’d use. Typically, farmers supply all the fuel for the slurry work.

“We usually supply the fuel for the baling work, because we could bale for 10-15 customers each day, and getting diesel off each farmer would slow things down too much when its busy.

“With the exception of some of the smaller farmers we work for, the vast majority of our clients supply the diesel.

“We arrive to the yard with a full tank, and fill up at the farmers pump when we’ve the job completed,” explained Darragh.

In 2023, Darragh set up Clover Agri Sales in partnership with fellow friend and employee Neale Spence.

Clover Agri Sales focuses on the sales and repair of slurry equipment, and also sells bespoke equipment alongside. Neale had prior experience in machinery sales, having worked with SlurryKat and later with Grass Technology.

Last year, the business was appointed as the sole distributor for Cri-Man slurry management products for the North of Ireland, the company is best-known in Irish machinery circles for its umbilical centrifugal slurry pumps.

This appointment was another feather to the dealers’ cap, who also retails brands such as Vogelsang, Mitchell Machinery, Wessex, Tusk Machinery, Tractor Bumper, Graham Warden Engineering and MBE slurry equipment.

“We are really pleased with how Clover Agri Sales is working out. We wanted to have a niche, so we decided to focus on slurry. We have a lot of experience with slurry from the contracting business, and this has greatly benefitted us in selling and repairing slurry equipment. We carry out a lot of slurry pump and macerator maintenance and refurbishment for local farmers and contractors,” he said.

“Myself and Neale carry out most of this work, but in wet weather our wider team of contracting staff give us a hand to speed up the job.

“The retail and service business can put some pressure on the contracting business from time to time, but by in large, slurry doesn’t have the same pressure and panic stations that silage tends to have with weather and timing etc.

“This just means we have an extra day here or there to play with when the pressure comes on. However, by in large the two businesses do complement each other,” said Darragh.

“We have five full-time staff, who work alongside my father and I. We are lucky to have competent staff, aged from their late 20s to mid-30s. We have work for these lads 12 months of the year, which is essential nowadays.

“Every day, each member of staff records all the days work in the One-Click Accounts smartphone app. Contracting is a business just like any other, and cash flow is vital to keep the wheels in motion. At the end of each month, we invoice our customers for the works carried out that month. We have a great system in place and our clients have really bought into it,” Darragh said.

“The cost of machinery versus the rate contractors are getting is the biggest challenge contractors are facing today. If you look at the cost of machinery 10 years ago versus today, rates have not risen accordingly. For example, 10 years ago, a new tractor was costing £100,000.

"Today, that same tractor is costing £170,000. Yes, contractors’ rates has increased a bit in that time, but to be honest the rise is just covering the increased cost of labour during that period. The cost of parts and maintenance has also increased dramatically.

"I firmly believe that machinery manufacturers have pushed the market to its limit with pricing. Farmers and contractors simply can’t afford to keep up with the price of equipment. Its gone to the stage now where rates are that tight, that changing a tractor for £12/clock hour or £15/clock hour is actually the difference between making a couple of pound or just breaking even or lossing money jobs,” Darragh said.

“The whole finance set up is quite hard to believe. If you went to a bank for a mortgage on a house, it’s a drawn-out process and its harder and harder to secure a loan for a house. However, if you ring a finance man for the same amount of money on a tractor, you would have it almost instantly. Sometimes I wonder is it too easy for people to get finance on machinery,” Darragh said.

“I do hope to see our contracting business continue to grow and develop over the coming years, but to be honest I see the real growth opportunities in the short term in our machinery retail business.

"Slurry separation is a very hot topic in Northern Ireland right now. We have sold several Vogelsang separators, including five separators to one particular project.

“We are currently out demoing a single separator unit mounted on a skid, which is a very keenly priced and simple unit in around £45,000. We do have a much larger setup coming shortly for our own contracting business also.

“The big attraction with separators in our area is reducing the fibre content in the slurry, so slurry can be applied and quickly absorbed in a multi-cut silage system. Gaining some extra storage capacity is a help, but going forward, we do feel that farmers who separate and export the solid faction will get allowances on P and K exportation, which we feel will be very important into the future.

“We are also doing quite well selling other bespoke equipment, such as silage compactors and implements such as safety bumpers or weights etc into civils contractors,” Darragh said.

“The best machine we’ve had to date has been a 2010 Fendt 820. It left our yard with 7,500 hours and never gave any trouble apart from set of PTO packs which was more caused by the Schuitemaker wagon it was pulling.

“This leads us on to our worst machine. It was a Schuitemaker wagon. It constantly gave reliability problems from new.

“Every time the pressure came on at grass work there’d be major breakdown and we often ended up hiring other men in to help finish jobs,” Darragh said.