Our Heritage

Dromad Hire: The Early Days

It was the mid-1980s. A young mechanic, newly married with an infant son, worked grueling hours in his rural garage in the townland of Dromad—right where Junction 20 stands today. Home was a modest mobile home parked right beside the workshop.

Money was tight, and survival meant versatility. He repaired everything that came through the door: from local farmers’ tractors to household washing machines. When the garage doors finally closed for the evening, his second shift began. To supplement his income, he spent nights at car auctions, buying bangers to fix and flip for a modest profit. It was a relentless, exhausting struggle.

Then came a turning point disguised as a mistake.

During one auction visit, he took a gamble on a job lot of ex-local authority lawnmowers. He brought them home, painstakingly restored them, and lined them up on the forecourt with “For Sale” signs. Weeks passed. Not a single person bought one. Despair began to set in.

Then, a local man walked in with a different proposition: Could he just rent one for a few hours to cut his grass?

That single question changed everything. The mechanic agreed, flipped the signs from “For Sale” to “For Hire,” and Dromad Hire was officially born.

That resourceful mechanic was my father, James—or Jimmy to his friends, and the infant son who learned the trade at his fathers knee was yours truly…

While our business started by pure chance, the foundation was built on absolute necessity. The principles that turned that chance into a legacy remain unchanged: a rock-solid engineering background, an obsessive focus on the customer, and the agility to pivot when the market demands it.

Decades later, those are still the guiding lights of Dromad Hire.

– Seamus Byrne

Managing Director

 

 

 

Photo: Seamus Byrne with an early Dromad Hire sign