Followers

Thursday 9 May 2013

The Tanunda Tractor Man


When I remember Geoff Schmidt I think of my cousin Doug Barton who came home from his apprenticeship training in Adelaide waxing lyrical about this bloke he’d met from Eckerman’s in Tanunda. Doug was excited about his new friend and after a week I think I knew as much about Geoff as Doug did. Their friendship grew during their training and I believe they even shared a couple of weekends together getting up to stuff seventeen year olds get up to.

I first met Geoff when I spent time with the Ford T&E demo team and spent two fabulous weeks with Eckerman’s of Tanunda. Geoff took me to demo tractors in most of the now famous vineyards. Places like Jacob’s Creek, Seppeltsfield and Angaston, I had one of the most memorable times of my career with Geoff and his friendship was valued. Geoff is not with us to tell his own story but thankfully his wife Maureen has graciously taken time to record Geoff’s life as a tractor man.

The Geoff Schmidt Glema Services story shouldn’t end here, as Maureen herself has played a big part in our machinery history and I can only hope that one day she too will tell more of her story.
 
Geoff Schmidt's involvement with Ford Tractors & Machinery.

 

From an early age growing up on a property in the iconic Barossa Valley, Geoff Schmidt had an appreciation of the needs of the grape grower and always desired to make life easier. He loved to tinker with old machinery and innovate where he could, using very limited resources.

Initially the property was run by horsepower alone, quite literally. But soon he convinced his Dad to buy a Fordson Major tractor. This revolutionised life on the farm and Geoff soon realised the potential of, and became fascinated by, tractors and all things mechanical.

Looking for greater challenges than were available on the farm, at the age of sixteen he started as an apprentice diesel mechanic at the Ford dealership, C.T Eckermann & Co., Tanunda.

Whilst completing his apprenticeship, an opportunity arose at Eckermanns for Geoff to try his hand at  sales, mainly tractors but cars & machinery also. He enjoyed the personal contact with farmers and grapegrowers.

In 1971 Geoff was offered an opportunity to join National Mutual Insurance as a sales consultant. Whilst the training undoubtedly assisted Geoff in his marketing skills, he soon found himself on the side of the road watching tractors working in the fields when he was supposed to be selling insurance.

 

Recognising that he missed his beloved tractors and especially the Ford badge on the front of them, he decided in April 1973 to start his own mechanical repair business. Newly married to Maureen and with their first child on the way, this was in retrospect, quite an ambitious, or some would say bravely foolish, thing to do.

We started out in a renovated old farm shed at Nain near Greenock, servicing all types of vehicles including tractors and trucks. Trading as Glema Services we built a clientele which included some of Geoff's previous customers and contacts from his time at Eckermanns.

In May 1975 we moved the business to a more central location at Kroemer's Crossing, Tanunda.
We added a new workshop.

Around that time Eckermanns had sold the Ford dealership to Rob Ladd Motors. Although at the time it was normal for the cars and tractor dealerships to operate as one, Rob Ladd Motors  were not interested in continuing the tractor side of the business.

Seeing an opportunity, we met with John McPherson, the Ford Tractors & Equipment rep. who helped  us obtain the  Ford Tractor Dealership in May 1977

Trading as Glema Services Pty Ltd., we were initially given a target of twelve new tractor sales for the first twelve months. We managed thirteen!  During 1980 a new showroom complemented the dealership.

That was the beginning of a great and long relationship with “Ford Tractors & Equipment”.

Many changes in the business occurred over the years. Mechanical harvesters replaced grape pickers and vineyard tractors needed to adapt also from their more traditional roles. Open air 2-wheel drive tractors with vine-dodgers gave way to 4-WD, air conditioned cabs with low-speed creeper gearboxes and spray equipment. Geoff was an innovator in matching combinations of tractor gearboxes, tyres sizes and P.T.O ratios to achieve optimum grape harvester efficiency.

The workshop also had to evolve to accommodate the increasingly sophisticated equipment.

We went through some very challenging times:

Company changes.  Ford Tractors & Equip became Ford New Holland  and then New Holland when Fiat bought the company.

Droughts came and went, vine-pulls and boom times for vignerons all were reflected in our business too. We were fortunately somewhat insulated from the vagaries of climate and economic fluctuations as our franchise area incorporated both vineyards and cereal cropping.
 
We were very fortunate to win some wonderful memorable holidays as incentives offered by the Ford Tractor Company. It was very exciting to be able to achieve these.

Due to Geoff’s ill health, regretfully we had to sell the business in 1998 to Ivan Limb who is still now trading as B.M.S (Barossa Machinery Services) in Tanunda, S.A.

In his retirement Geoff’s love of tractors continued, collecting 23 of various Ford models,

to play with.

 

Sadly, Geoff died in a car accident in August, 2003.