“We are so lucky with the four managers we have now....”

because of the impact he had on morale.

“Since he’s been gone the atmosphere up there has improved out of sight, everybody’s happy and the overall performance is back up.

“We are so lucky with the four managers we have now – two in Christchurch, one in Auckland and Riki in Dunedin. You ask for something to be done and it gets done, there is no need to follow-up or bother them. The t wo in Christchurch are new to the job – the branch manager has been in place only three months and the linehaul manager started just a f ortnight ago – but already they’ve come up with initiatives to make the work more efficient and fun.

“When it comes to things like staff relations and HR, I leave the managers to make their own calls. Of course, if they have any issues they can call on me, but if they get the morale right there won’t be any issues...and they’re striking all the right notes there.

“Until recently we had a company general manager based here in Dunedin, Simon Holliday, who was a wonderful worker and helped me through the transition f rom buying Tony out. But the job was wearing him out, and he has made a very sensible decision to have a complete lifestyle change and enjoy more time with his f amily. We are still good f riends.”

Riki Duff explains that he first met Teressa and Tony when he was a teenager: “This was around 20 years ago, and I u sed to hitch a r ide through to Cromwell with my uncle who worked in the same company as them. I s tarted there myself, on loadout at the dock, and had worked through to looking af ter