H opkins Machinery – also known as
Tractor Hire – has more than 20 years
of experience in buggy hire, supplying
event organisers with tractors, buggies, and
telehandlers for a wide range of live events
and festivals.
Taking on the Club Car franchise in 2003
boosted the company's growth and since
then, Hopkins Machinery's hire business has
expanded extensively.
For more than 16 years, the family-owned
business – with depots in Gloucestershire,
the South West, South Wales, and Mid Wales
– has worked with the European Tour as its
preferred Club Car dealer and works with
the organiser on its major event portfolio,
including the Ryder Cup.
Evan Hopkins, director of Hopkins
Machinery, said: “Having the Ryder Cup
at the Celtic Manor in 2010 was great, it
allowed us to expand our depot and our
fleet. We supplied and managed more than
350 buggies for the event, and it was a great
experience. Since then we have worked
on three more Ryder Cups – Gleneagles,
Scotland, in 2014, Le Golf National, Paris,
in 2018 and the most recent Ryder Cup at
Marco Simone Golf and Country Club, Rome.”
Over the past number of years, Hopkins
Machinery has worked closely with the
European Tour and other organisations
including the R&A, IMG and now LIV Golf.
Long-term relationships and repeat business
have enabled Hopkins Machinery to invest
more in logistics and haulage assets, making
the task of moving more than 700 buggies
across Europe each year a lot easier.
Hopkins continued further: “We have nine
HGVs that feature double-decked trailers
each with a carrying capacity of up to 22
Club Car buggies.
“When you have an average of 22
tournaments a year, it helps to have an inhouse
fleet of trailers, keeping transport costs
and movements under our control rather
than relying on external providers.”
For the 2023 Ryder Cup, Hopkins was
asked by Club Car and the European Tour to
be involved in the buggy consultation from
the start. The European Tour consulted with
Hopkins on the specifications and list of Club
Car golf carts and utility vehicles that were
required for their operations, contractors,
and sponsors.
Club Car supplied 242 new cars to the
event. Hopkins Machinery oversaw the
charging facilities and dedicated buggy
compounds and provided help allocating
the buggies. The company also supplied two
truckloads of buggies to help the Ryder Cup
team with its operations.
Despite there being more than 300
buggies on-site for the operations team to
stage the event, TV broadcasters such as
Sky, NBC, Golf Channel, and the World Feed
supplied by European Tour Productions
still required buggies. Hopkins Machinery
supplied a further 224 buggies that were
required by the broadcast teams. This
equated to 11 truckloads of buggies that
needed to be delivered to Italy from the UK.
The first load was delivered in March and the
last will be collected in November.
A team of nine Hopkins Machinery staff
helped to manage and support the huge
buggy hire operation on site in Rome.
They worked in shifts to ensure the smooth
operation of all the buggies from allocating
them to users to charging and repairing the
odd puncture and issue.
Hopkins concluded: “The Ryder Cup is a
brilliant event to be involved in and we enjoy
every moment. It is always great to work on
an event with customers that are easy and
a pleasure to work with and we are very
appreciative to have the support of a supplier
such as Club Car.”