HAURAKI PLAINS MOTORS 100 YEAR MILESTONE FEATURE
When Miles and Diane Shelley talk about their journeys at Hauraki Plains Motors, there’s a sentiment that echoes through their adventure so far – “we’ve grown with the company”.
It’s a reflection from the owners as they celebrate a monumental milestone this month, the mark of 100 years in business.
“It’s a great achievement to have reached 100 years, so we’re very proud of it,” Miles and Diane told The Profile.
They bring out some photographs from the early days when Hauraki Plains Motors was started by Mr Croxford in 1926.
“He may have actually started it in 1924. And then it became a company of Hauraki Plains Motors in 1926,” Miles said.
“Some of the documents that we’ve got are dated 1924, but they’ve been crossed out to 1926.”
Mr Croxford was the first sole owner, later joined by a new partner, Ngatea-local Phil Benner.
While Miles and Diane can only go by documentation, as there is a huge amount of reading, all handwritten minutes of meetings, in very old style handwriting, dates may not be totally accurate for when the business has changed hands across the earlier years.
Information was kept in journals, notebooks and documents that have stayed with the business.
The next owners of HPM were Miles’ parents Bruce and Doreen, along with two other partners who bought shares in the business. “And then they’ve all just slowly gone,” Miles said.
Bruce started as an apprentice in about 1953. Miles’ brother, Warrick started work there in 1973, followed by Miles in 1976 and Diane in 1977.
Eventually, all three had shares in the business, alongside former partner Frank Fullerton, but each time someone left, “we would buy more shares”, Miles said.
Now, and for the past 10 years, Miles and Diane are the sole owners of Hauraki Plains Motors and were the only other sole owners apart from Mr Croxford.
It’s not possible for the Shelleys to sum up or recall everything that has happened across their own five decades of working at the Ngatea business, let alone the 100-year history the business holds.
“It’s such a long story to tell, we’ve been here for so long, we have forgotten about things because we’ve just moulded and adjusted with the times,” they said.
“Systems have changed dramatically, you forget about how we used to do it because we do it like this now. We have just moved on with the times and it is a team effort.”
Diane reveals boxes and boxes of photograph books, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, documents and even wage files from across the decades.
“This is when I was doing the wages back in the day,” Diane said.
She flips open a wage book from the 1980s. “And I had to get everybody to sign them, and then I had to sign it to say that they had received their pay,” she said.
“We had a bank in Ngatea at that time. Everyone got paid in cash, so then you had to break down into all denominations, so many $10 notes and so many twos and threes and ones. We were down to cents back in those days, even down to one cent.
“It had to be all ordered from the bank the day before, then you’d have to go and pick it all up and put it into little envelopes for everybody and then take it out to everyone, and get them to sign the book,” she said.
“There is so much more we could talk about, but we started off as manual as manual could be, changing to the new age technology of computers and online social media, it really has been quite the journey when we have the time to sit and reflect.”
“I remember they brought in direct banking and all that was such a big deal. And having to collect everybody’s bank account numbers for a start. Some still wanted some in cash and they’d want some put in their bank. Learning to pay creditors online instead of typing up cheques, but it was just what you did back then, you just didn’t think about it.”
Something that hasn’t changed though is Diane and Miles’ care for their team.
“We appreciate our staff. We wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t [for them],” they said.
“We’ve got a lot of longstanding employees and some have been with us as long as we’ve been here.”
One thing they valued was the fact their staff knew their community.
“Because we have been here for so long and the staff have been there for so long, we always try to prioritise, like maybe, a farmer needs something fixed because they’ve got cows to milk that afternoon.
“That’s how we’ve worked for the last 50 years.”
One of the reasons they believed HPM was “still working well” came down to the “support of our customers and community”.
“We care about our customers and our staff and it’s not always about the dollar.”
Diane pulls out another book with photos of the A&P Show that used to be held across the road at the Hugh Hayward Domain, work parties, staff photos and even a speeding ticket.
“It’s not until you start looking at photos, it prompts you to remember a bit of it all,” Miles said.
By DAVIDDA HIKATANGATA
