Rob Bridger: My story and Ford Tractor Operations.

A couple of weeks back I posted a story by Rob Bridger. I edited the piece and by doing so made the story inaccurate. Therefore it was necessary to remove the post.

I'm grateful that Rob has taken the opportunity to add to his original piece and along with some photos to illustrate his experiences, his story takes you to the region he managed so capably. 

Today I'm pleased to post his story the way he wrote it.

Copyright Rob Bridger 2013
The moral right as author has been asserted.

My story and Ford Tractor Operations.

In mid 1975 Noel Howard our G.M. of the day asked me into his office for a talk. He asked if I’d like to go overseas.

At this time I was a Service Development Coordinator charged with the responsibility of encouraging our dealers to keep their workshops clean and tidy and more importantly to sell their service manpower profitably.

To achieve these ends I came up with several programmes that most zone managers and dealers participated in enthusiastically. Planned Service Improvement was one of them and Regular Planned Maintenance the other.

It was the latter that I was working on when I had my chat with Noel as I was communicating with our N.Z. people and Basildon quite a bit to get R.P.M. sorted out. So I thought he meant a week in N.Z. to finish up the job. No, he said, go and live in Singapore and work from there in the Asia Pacific Region. This proposition didn’t need much thinking about so he said he would arrange an interview with Paul Gillis one of many VIPs who visited from WHQ in Troy Michigan.

About a fortnight later I was summoned in to see Paul, a tall rangy Canadian guy. One thing he kept asking was what I knew about travel. So I explained to him that I was born and raised in Nyasaland (Malawi) in the middle of Africa and travelled by school train over a period of 8 years, for two days and nights six times a year to get to and from boarding school in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and that this involved four immigration checks in and out of Mocambique and a day in Beira, the port on the Indian Ocean. This experience also meant exchanging money from the two kinds of Pounds we lived with and the Portuguese Escudo so at an early age I became accustomed to handling several currencies at once.

Having finished high school at the end of 1960, I went and worked on farms in England, did four years at Ag. College and then in 1966 left Bird’s Eye, my student job, and started my first real job. I was hired by Mike Hutton with Ford Tractors as a Service Lecturer at their World famous training school at Boreham House. Anybody who is to do with Ford Tractors knows about Boreham.

Then in May 1968 I quit Ford and my wife and I left on a ship for Australia as ten pound Poms. Full board and meals plus travel half way round the world at the Aus. Government’s expense isn’t a bad deal!

In Merredin W.A., I sold green and yellow tractors for a while and then having been poached by the competition sold blue and grey ones for Wigmores, the Ford dealer of the day. As poaching was quite rife in those days Tom Nougher, the Western District Manager for FTO, approached me at the Dowerin field days and offered me a Field Manager’s job with the Company. So from September 1969 I worked out of our Fremantle office for a year or so until Harry Watson our General Sales manager transferred me to Broadmeadows to work with Frank Pitney as an Industrial Zone Manager selling the old 4500s and O.E.M. equipment. Vin Smith in Sydney and I were the first Industrial specialists.

By now the famous Clarence Reagan had been and gone back to Oakland California after turning the organisation upside down, sometimes for the better.      

Anyway, jumping from salary grade 7 to 9, I got the job as a District Sales Manager in the Asia Pacific Region and, as a family with two children aged 2 and 4, we arrived on the 25^th August 1975 and so began eight years of the best job I ever had with FTO.

The Asia Pacific Region was vast and to point out just the extremities gives one an idea of the size. Singapore, roughly in the middle was where our office was and where we lived, West-Sri Lanka, North- Bangladesh, Thailand, South Korea, East-Fiji, Tahiti, South-P.N.G., Indonesia and all points in between.

Because of the comings and going of people during the time I was there, I had a responsibility for sales in all these markets at some stage. However for the majority of the time Bruce Giddings and I split the territory in two sales areas and it worked well. We each had a service rep working with us, Brian Haydon and I worked together the longest.

We worked with distributors or dealers in all these so called developing or third World countries and the vast majority of our business involved winning tenders to supply tractors for various projects. These and any tractors included were funded by the likes of the World Bank, the O.E.C.D., the British Crown Agents, Aus. Aid, U.S. Aid and others. The funds for these projects were generally put into the recipient country through one of their several major banks who were involved with preparing and calling these tenders.

This was where we came in; to become involved with the people developing the various projects requiring tractors, and the banks who were to administer the funds to pay for the job. This needed a lot of talking and coaxing and in some cases helping to prepare the tenders to suit our tractor specifications.

Whilst business was conducted in much the same way in most of the territory I’ll go for more detail in Sri Lanka where I held a record of going there 50 times during my time working from Singapore.

In 1976, my first full year of looking after this market, we shipped 5 tractors here for 3.5% of the market, in 1979 after a lot of effort we shipped 895 units for 39% and there were another 311 units confirmed but on the stop list in Antwerp because of a hold up with the letter of credit. How come?  

It went like this.

Up till 1977 the country was ruled by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, a very left leaning organisation under Mrs Srimavo Bandaranayake. Everything was done through Corporations controlled by the Government. We had to try and do business through the Tractor Corporation with whom it was extremely hard to get on.

Then a general election was called and the United National Party under Junius Jayawardene came to power. Our dealer Dick Dharmadasa’s father had been a very popular Senator in this party in a former government and this connection proved invaluable during the next few years. During the Corporation days we did not officially have a dealer because the Corporations were supposed to do it all for us and all dealer agreements had been negated anyway. As soon as we were able in 1977 we reappointed Senator Apuhamy’s old company, Sathiyawadi Stores & Motor Transporters Ltd. with his son Dick as dealer principal.

Once the UNP came to power the World decided it could do business with these guys and money poured into the country. Many development projects that had lain dormant for years under the SLFP were dusted off and put into action. In our case this involved lots that needed tractors for cultivation and haulage, in most cases with a three and a half ton tipping trailer which our dealer used to build himself. The vast majority of our sales were the Ford 3000/3600 against the MF 35/135 who was our main competitor in this market and between us we shared most of the sales.

One of the jobs that proved very good for us was the 5 Tanks Project supervised by the Irrigation Dept, now no longer a Corporation. Some 2000 years ago the ancients made many large dams (Tanks) with sophisticated irrigation systems. Over time these silted up and the jungle took over again. Five of the largest tanks were selected for rejuvenation. Using our tractors and hundreds of labourers the jungle was cleared, the irrigation fixed up and rice paddies put back into production to feed the people.

  

Part of 100 for Irrigation Department, Sri Lanka

The Sugar Corporation, (for some reason this name stuck), was the only group who always bought the larger 5000/6600 from us and they usually bought in lots of about 30 units a time. 

One day Derek Bailey called from his export office in Basildon and asked if I could find a home for 311 x 3600s because a deal had gone bad in Pakistan and they were ready to be shipped. Naturally I was on the next flight to Colombo to see what could be done, normally our dealer did not stock his own tractors for retail business as it just was not usual in this environment. However it was time to change things.

Dick, his GM Flavian Weerasinghe and I went to every bank and finance institution in Colombo to find money to raise letters of credit to pay for the tractors and to arrange for local funds to finance locals into buying their own tractors which to date they had not done because they could not afford them. This was achieved and they arrived in early 1980, having ensured the tractor specification included the M4 automatic pick up hitch and the price was the lowest we could get.

311 tractors for retail arrive at dockside Colombo

One could go on and on about this country as it was when I went there which has undergone a war and many things since the 1970s.

PNG was another very different place. I’ve seen all the men from a village turn up and insist on buying the largest tractor on display, a 6600 instead of a 3600 which would have suited their needs far better, and then produce coins and notes to pay for it in cash! All this while wearing ass grass (a grass covering of the nether regions)!

Graeme Lawson, our resident dealer salesman, had some customers living in missions with no road access- only an airstrip. Tractors delivered in these cases were dismantled and many flights were made with a Cessna taking the engine then the gear box and so on. The rear tyres were squashed with a forklift and tied tightly with a rope so they looked like a banana as this was the only way to get the tyre into the plane with the doors open.

Loading a Cessna to deliver a tractor in PNG

  



 Squashed rear tyre for shipping by Cessna











A trailer cut into sections to allow delivery by air.












Other interesting snippets of life include-

In the Solomons I’ve been paddled up rivers in a tribal canoe to visit chiefs who wanted to talk about tractors.

In Kiribati, from behind our dealer’s premises, I climbed to the highest point in the country- 7 feet 5 inches!

In South Korea I’ve discussed tractor performance with potential buyers sitting in a park under cherry blossom eating strawberries and cream.

In the Philippines, a country of over 7000 islands, I trained dealer staff in all sorts of sales and product schools in many of these islands. We used to conduct a test at the start of a school and then the same test at the end. The improvement was pleasing to see.

In Saipan I sailed over the Marianas Trench, the deepest water in the World, to Tinian where the Inola Gay took off with the first nuclear bomb to drop on Japan. This country was so devastated by the battle of Saipan that after the war they aerial seeded tree seeds to stop erosion. Farmers were still ploughing up live munitions and causing damage to tractors and ploughs and people as well.

In Indonesia I water skied on Lake Toba, an extinct volcano, in the highlands of Sumatra.

In Dacca, Bangladesh the city was so gridlocked with traffic the only way to get around was by trishaw, those guys on the pedals deserved every rupee they charged in that hot humid heat.

Out in a boat off Tahiti with dealer Fred Siu, his son Daniel and two Frenchmen from the Board of Works we caught bonito and discussed TLBs. This account was generally worth at least 5 units a year. 

During my time in Singapore I appointed six new and very successful dealers or distributers responsible for our product throughout their countries. They sold hundreds of machines.   

In 1983 I moved to New Zealand for 2 years as the Tractor Manager where I had a great team of five working with me. We took Ford to market leadership by the time I left, even though every one of our dealers was also a vehicle dealer. We had 85 dealers from Cape to Bluff and I visited every one. Moving from a Direct market to an Affiliate was not easy and less enjoyable.

1985 saw me back in Australia and so ended 10 years on Overseas Assignment where I had more or less total independence and was trusted to make my own decisions and make sales in numbers nobody here would ever dream of.

These 10 years allowed me to meet some interesting and fascinating people and experience situations that I would not have had if I had stayed in Australia during that time. Selling Ford tractors in the Asia Pacific Region was hard yet enjoyable and educational too, thanks to Noel for putting my name forward and Henry for paying for it.

Ford Tractor Operations became Ford New Holland in 1987 and I performed a number of jobs in the sales, service and training departments until April 1991 when I was retrenched.

Since then I have been successfully farming my own property on the Mornington Peninsula, raising cattle and growing fresh cut culinary herbs for restaurants and catering companies sold through one distributor for 22 years.  

Photos from the time:

A perfect place to advertise - the tailboard of a trailer

Some of the 150 for Mahawelli Development Board Sri Lanka

 

Some of the 150 for the Low Lying Development Board 








Some of the 25 X 550 TLB for National Irrigation Authority, Phillippines













Preparing a rice paddy

And finally, me in Tahiti.