Mighty Morris Leslie order for JCB

5 March 2024

Morris Leslie Plant Hire has started celebrations for its 50th birthday in style by placing an order for a fleet of new JCB machines worth £68 million. The company says it also shows its confidence in the UK’s housebuilding and construction market.

 The substantial order includes telescopic handlers, excavators, mini excavators, compaction rollers and site dumpers. The deal also includes fifty JCB backhoe loaders, one for every year Morris Leslie Plant Hire has been in business and a product on which the success of the company was built.

JCB Chairman Anthony Bamford (pictured left) handed over the keys to one of the backhoes to Founder Morris Leslie – a special Platinum Edition machine produced to mark the iconic machine’s 70th birthday – along with a scale model of the historic unit.

Lord Bamford said: “We are very proud of our long association with Morris Leslie Plant Hire. Like many of our customers, the company has grown from very small beginnings into a force to be reckoned with in the plant hire sector. From one family company to another, we wish Morris Leslie Plant Hire a very happy 50th birthday.”

Morris Leslie commented: “Over the years, we have bought more than 7,000 JCB machines, so our success over the past half century is very much intertwined with that of JCB and we look forward to building on our partnership in the years to come.”

Perth-based Morris Leslie has 15 depots across the UK. Morris Leslie founded the company on his parents’ farm in 1974 in the Carse of Gowrie, near Perth, where he began buying and selling construction equipment. Today the company has a fleet of more than 5,000 machines. 

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