At that time, Scottish Land Development Corporation, Mapco Limited and Sandy Gilmour (Plant) Limited were virtually the only firms in Scotland dealing exclusively in the business of plant hire.

SEPARATE
After an unrequited courtship of the Contractors Plant Association in England, the separate Scottish organisation was created to take account of the different climatic conditions obtaining in Scotland and, more importantly, of the structure of the construction industry in this country which necessitated that much of the plant hiring would have to be done by firms who engaged also in other branches of the industry.

In the beginning, the Association had 16 members and a Committee of 10.

The Association quickly grew in strength and in stature. It was the first such body in the United Kingdom to prepare and issue a Schedule of Rates whose nomenclature can, indeed, be recognised in documents subsequently produced by other organisations.

HIRE AGREEMENT
The Hire Agreement, whose format recognised the unlikelihood of a bilateral document being signed by the parties to a hire transaction, has also been adopted in form by other bodies, has stood the test of time and scrutiny by the Office of Fair Trading.

An examination of the Presidential Chain of Office, donated to the Association by the late Frank Lilley and the late Neill Hodge (probably one of the first all gold and enamelled chains of office produced after the war), would also give cause to reflect on the passage of time since the Association was formed.

The enamelled medallion depicts a digger driver in a cloth cap sitting in the open and unprotected cockpit of his machine.

CHANGES
The changes which have taken place in the industry over the past 49 years have been many and varied.

It is not possible to relate all of them here but it would be wrong not to mention one such change which, it might be thought, was the reason for the reduction in profit margins which has be-devilled the industry for many years.

When the Association was formed, rates were fixed by it on the basis of a formula whose constituent parts included the average capital cost of a particular type of machine, a percentage for depreciation, a percentage for repairs and maintenance, a percentage for oncost and a percentage for profit.

This formula was applied against the background of a utilisation factor of 2,000 hours per year. That utilisation, it is worthy of mention, was in fact then attained.

Fixing of rates or of prices by any "two or more people gathered together" or, indeed, the recommending of rates by any trade federation was made illegal by the passing of the Retail Price Maintenance Act of 1956. Thereafter, it was possible for the Association only to produce a schedule to show the average rates actually being obtained at any given time.

This the Association has continued to do ever since.