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Bourne Amenity chooses new John Deere Compact Tractors
Two new John Deere 20 Series compact tractors, both fitted with ComfortGard quiet cabs and eHydro transmissions, have joined the fleet run by Bourne Amenity Ltd.
Employing 20 people and with a £4 million turnover, Bourne Amenity manages natural and artificial turf construction and maintenance contracts for a wide range of commercial and community sports and recreational facilities, working in particular with local authorities, schools private sports clubs and construction companies.
The business is part of the family run John Bourne Group, which was founded in 1947 to supply farmers and growers in the south-east of England with agricultural lime, and diversified into the sports turf industry about 15 years ago. Recent clients include West Sussex County Council, Dulwich College, Tonbridge School, Sidcup Sports Club and Hastings Football Club.
The group also produces its own root zone sands and top dressings for sports turf and landscaping use, and sells a range of aggregates from 25kg bags to 20-tonne lorry loads, with a retail business called Gardenscape Direct Ltd offering up to 1 tonne bulk bags for home use.
Bourne Amenity’s contracts manager Andrew Dennis implements and manages a mix of ongoing and new projects across south-east England, which covers everything from pitch construction and maintenance to land drainage and renovations, across all sporting disciplines. These provide enough work to keep a staff of nine operators going all year round.
Machinery includes trenchers, drainers, diggers, spreaders and ancillary equipment such as power harrows, laser graders, and topping and finishing mowers for use with or alongside the company’s fleet of eight compact tractors from 40 to 50hp. These now include the new John Deere 42hp 3720 model equipped with a front loader, and the 52hp 4520, which will be used mainly for land drainage work, top dressing with 5- and 6-tonne spreaders filled by the loader model, and verti-draining.
The year-round versatility of compact tractors means they will also be used with rear-mounted equipment for de-compaction, power harrowing, over seeding and even mowing – the company has recently completed a three year construction contract for three new PFI schools in Crawley, covering all of their sports fields, where Bourne Amenity will now continue to carry out regular grass cutting, pitch marking and other general maintenance tasks.
“We all know John Deere makes good machines, but it is the customer and technical service available from our dealer Palmers Turfcare that has been the particular selling point for us,” Andrew Dennis explains. “At the height of the season, the tractors are out every day, so if something goes wrong, it’s very important to get them fixed and back working as quickly as possible.
“Whenever we have had a breakdown on other equipment that took a long time to fix, Palmers’ salesman Richard Wood has provided us with support machines, and this level of service has proved invaluable. Usually it’s pretty run of the mill things that go wrong, but you need to have confidence in the dealer’s parts and service backup – if any supplier lets us down, we let our customers down and that’s no good for the business relationship moving forward.
“We aim to achieve a consistently high and repeatable standard of product and service, and that’s certainly what we’ve bought into with John Deere’s parts system, which just needs to be experienced to prove its value.
“We had the 4520 on demonstration for a week or so before it was delivered just after Christmas, and we put a full range of kit on the back to make sure we’d got the horsepower right. One of our lorry loads often goes out equipped to do a sports field on its own, with a tractor, Vertidrainer, sand spreader and over-seeder, sometimes also a fertiliser spreader, so we wanted to make sure the tractor was matched up to the tasks. So far the operators particularly like the quiet cab, which is bigger than you find on most compacts on the market.”
Both tractors feature an eHydro transmission with LoadMatch, MotionMatch and cruise control functions. This advanced yet simplified transmission system is designed to be easier to operate and more accurate than the mechanical alternative, especially for deep tining operations for example.
“This transmission means the operator can find the hole pattern more quickly and accurately, and match the exact tractor speed after headland turns, which means he can achieve the same precise and consistent pattern on each run,” says Richard Wood. “In addition, if you’re working on the flat and then come to a slope, for example, the tractor senses this and adjusts the engine power automatically to match the forward speed. Cruise control is also very useful as it allows the operator to use the resume setting to make the turn round quicker.”
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