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NOVEMBER 2012 | HIRE
AND
RENTAL
NEWS
| 17
INDUSTRY IN FOCUS
Paul Bell, a Director at Able Hire in
Kirrawee in Sydney’s south is celebrating
a 30 year career in the hire industry and
here he reflects on how things have
changed yet still stay the same.
After a few beers with old mates at the
NSW HRIA away meeting in Bowral (in
early August), I stopped and thought for a
minute. “Wow I have been in this game a
bloody long time!”
We were telling stories of past
conventions and joking about some of
our antics when a couple of guys new to
the industry asked how I came to know
all these people. I started to recall where I
had met all these hire guys and thought to
myself, this has been quite a journey, maybe
I should share it.
When I left school in 1977 I wasn’t too
sure what I wanted to do for work. I told
my father I wanted to be a professional
surfer. His reply was: “You have a week to
get a job or find somewhere else to live.”
That said I decided I would be a carpenter.
My father had a panel beating workshop
and I had helped him since I was young.
I could weld and use a spray gun and pull
cars apart but had realised it wasn’t the job
for me. So off I went to work as a carpenter.
I managed a few years, but wasn’t good
at it, so I changed jobs and took up an
apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, which,
as it turns out, I wasn’t good at either!
So I did fitting and machining during the
day and finished my carpentry course at
TAFE at night. I was still unsure about what
job I wanted when I saw an ad for a fitter at
Conveyor and Hoist Rentals at St Peters.
I started there in 1984 and it wasn’t long
before I was out onsite helping to install
Barrow Hoists. I quite liked the freedom
the job gave me and in getting out of the
workshop. I then got my heavy vehicle
licence which enabled me to do more
deliveries etc.
I teamed up with another guy
(nicknamed “Pig Dog”
–
he was a big
bugger!) and we had the enviable task of
installing sections of barrow hoists where
the truck cranes couldn’t reach.
It was quite a feat. We would be hanging
off the side of these hoists with no safety
harnesses, manually lifting these 100kg
sections up and bolting them down. I
remember a job at Umina where we were
six stories up! Needless to say the pay was
good and I enjoyed it.
This all came to an end after about
18 months when Australia had a building
Celebrating 30 years in hire - one story
downturn and I was retrenched.
Just around the corner from where I lived
in Bexley was a hire shop
–
St George Hire.
I noticed they had barrow hoists, the
same as I had been working on at Conveyor
and Hoist Rentals.
I approached the owner, Rob Wallis and
told him how great I was; that I could weld,
paint, fix houses, and drive trucks and
best of all I knew hoists. Rob hired me as a
yardman driver and off to work I went.
St George Hire was a great business and
had been going for quite a few years; we
had over 60 trucks and tonnes of other
gear. The only problem was back in the
80’s hire gear was pretty rough and I spent
more time in the yard fixing things than I
did delivering.
We would have to tow start some of the
hire trucks with the forklift on Saturday
mornings. I remember getting a bit carried
away and ripping the bulbar off the last
truck to go out and the customer having to
wait in the office while we repaired it.
There was no such thing as OH&S or
overloading in those days. We would put as
much machinery on a truck as we could fit.
We had a 3 tonne truck with two Bobcats
on sideways, towing a trailer and excavator,
no worries.
I had a Bobcat fall out the back of an
8 tonne tipper on Canterbury Road once.
Luckily after it rolled over it came back up
on its wheels. I just got the ramps out and
sheepishly loaded it back on.
Towing the builder’s hoists was always
pretty dangerous. The two barrow hoist
behind a vehicle was as long as a semi-
trailer but was about 4m high with a 2m
wheelbase. This meant they had a tendency
to fall over. I remember rolling one over
across four lanes of traffic on the Princes
Highway at Rockdale. Not pretty!
I was spending a lot of time in the yard
(probably because I was too dangerous
in the truck) when the manager suddenly
resigned. Rob offered me the job of
manager; I was gobsmacked at 22 years old
to be running a hire business.
St George Hire really started to fire at
this time. I remember doing 110 hires one
Saturday with six staff at Bexley. Before
long Rob had purchased an old service
station at Marrickville and we opened
another branch. This branch paid for itself
in 12 months.
Not long after that he purchased ACME
Hire at Carlton and Kirrawee. I had spread
my staff pretty thin and I was overseeing
the four stores and it was going well.
Rob Wallis is one of the industry’s greats
and a more non-pretentious bloke you
would never meet.
One day he asked if he could borrow my
ute; I said, of course mate you own it. So we
swapped. I gave him the Hilux and he gave
me his brand new 560Mercedes Benz.
To put this in perspective, my house was
worth 60K and the car was 200k? I thought
it was a fair swap.
Rob had hatched a deal with Stephen
Donnelly (Stephen Donnelly Hire) and Gary
Butler (Abbot Hire) to form one company
which became National Hire.
The merger of these companies was
pretty messy because all the companies had
long term staff that feared for their jobs.
Management decided we needed a team
building weekend, so the whole company
headed to Windang for the weekend.
The only problem was they had some
guy named Grant (can’t remember his
surname) who was the GURU of merger
management.
... continued p18
Able Hire’s premises in Sutherland owned and managed by brothers Paul and Jeff Bell