Their Stories: the people of AgList

Keith Waterhouse:     Parts Manager Gippsland Victoria

I am about to commence my 52nd year in spare parts and I am unaware of anyone else who has lasted that long!!

I started in 1961 at a Ford car& tractor dealer called Brown’s Pakenham Garage. Our head office was GS& JS Brown in Warragul and another branch was located at Trafalgar. After learning the basic skills required by someone working in an automotive parts store. I left to take up a position at Coffey Ford. At the time it was Allen Coffey Motors and they were located prominently in Dandenong.

During nineteen seventy, my time based at Coffey’s was interrupted when fire destroyed the entire showroom and parts areas. New Oakleigh Motors parts department generously allowed me to pick parts from their shelves to supply our Coffey Ford delivery vans and maintaining our high standard of service to our clients. In total our parts service worked from there for six months.

It’s confidence building to be approached and offered a new career opportunity and in nineteen seventy five this happened. I was offered and took up the position as Parts Manager at a new tractor and machinery dealership called Dandenong Ford Tractors. Geoff Thacker. Was the dealer principal and soon after starting there we began a very quick rise to become one of the top six Ford Tractor dealers in Australia.

In nineteen seventy seven, I was one of six from the Australian Ford Tractor Dealers network to be awarded a trip to England and Europe. The criteria for these awards are usually based around sales and service benchmarks, and I’m pleased that this was an area that my departments excelled in. Winning once isn’t easy but it fills me with pride to think that over the next few years my efforts resulted in other sojourns to New Caledonia, Hawaii and again England.

A couple of names I remember on some of these trips were the late Alby Geale of Goulbourn, John Dean from Sydney and Ted Sippel from Tamworth. During another sales competition I also won one of four new utilities offered as rewards/prizes for parts sales in nineteen eighty six.

A bout of ill health in nineteen ninety subdued me for quite some time, and unfortunately Dandenong Ford Tractors succumbed to the financial crisis gripping our country and closed their doors. However soon after, another opportunity arose and I commenced work at Ford New Holland in Cranbourne. My new title was Specification Analyst and I soon came to grips with working within the structure of a large multinational company.

During my time with New Holland David Toy and I travelled extensively conducting dealer parts training courses. We often travelled long distances to train dealer staff, from places as far afield as Ayr in Nth Queensland to Perth in Western Australia. We did this twice in a two year period.

Another task I had was identifying parts destined for scrapping when FIAT took over Ford New Holland in nineteen ninety three. Imagine my alarm when I discovered the parts area in Sydney was too small to take the stock we held in our Cranbourne warehouse. The situation was impossible.

Deciding not to move to Sydney I took up an appointment as Parts Manager at Gendore Enterprises in Tooradin, Victoria. Working alongside Rex Genoni and his son Derek, we welcomed visits by the legendary Lew Genoni popping in on occasions to see how the business he started a generation before was doing.

Gendore were FIAT and New Holland dealers at the time. They also imported and distributed a wide range of Taarup agricultural equipment across Australia. As is often the case some years later the Kverneland group began to take over several companies in Europe and eventually Taarup came under their umbrella. The Kverneland board decided to distribute their products in Australia themselves and knowing we had the expertise to do this entered into discussions with the Genoni family to create a new entity called Kverneland Gendore Australia. This company would handle all the imported goods, and the original Gendore Enterprises became Gendore Tractors & Machinery.

I remained with the new company in my role as National Parts Manager and we recorded excellent sales figures across all of our products. I continued with the company distributing Accord, Kverneland, Taarup, Vicon and Rau until the two thousand and six / seven financial year when Kverneland, the parent company decided to withdraw from distribution in Australia. I elected not to go to the new company and I found myself out of work.

Again fortune smiled and John Carney at Traf Tractors of Trafalgar in Gippsland offered a job. They were a Case dealer and opening a branch at Leongatha. This branch would require experienced staff to manage the office and parts dept. I spent my time between their two operations.

After about three years of driving to Leongatha or Trafalgar every day, I was delighted when again be approached by Gendore. They needed someone with my skill-set and asked if I would come back so now I have returned to my old employer. I have just completed another two years with them as their Parts Manager.