The Norm Fiegert Story

Norm Fiegert, a tractor man, looms large in my memory, it was 1969 and as a Ford Company demonstrator I had been sent to his Cleve dealership. I had a flat top Ford truck with a 6Y Ford 5000 demo unit and a mission to help him sell the new 6Y range of tractors. As I backed the tractor from the truck Norm noticed a slight miss in the engine. In no time the tappets had been adjusted and the timing checked.

‘We have to get that injection pump off and down to Lincoln to get it sorted,’ he ordered. Mr. Fiegert would be leaving nothing to chance.

My week of working with Norm taught me the art of properly preparing for a demonstration.

Years later I was now a tractor dealer too, and part of  a rowdy bunch of sales staff who were standing around in a sandy paddock east of Loxton. We were there for a new Blue-line machinery release. To entertain us while the company staff prepared the machinery, Norm was asked to do a sales pitch on the Napier sourced Blue-line folding wide cultivator. His direct and simple approach again taught me new selling skills and using a six point presentation technique, he ‘sold’ the machine. Folding and unfolding the wings to illustrate its benefits.

Always jovial, Norm finished with his own warranty statement. 'Ladies and gentlemen another benefit of the Blue-line cultivator is that we offer a one two warranty with this machine. Once you pay for it, too bloody bad.’ Our assembly of seasoned sales people cracked with laughter.

Yes, I’m proud to say that I’m a Norm Fiegert fan and I’m very glad to be able to share his story.

Here is Norm telling his own Story

The earliest memories of my childhood dream job was to become a mechanic and I remember applying for a correspondence course, which I started but didn’t complete. After leaving school at fourteen I started working with relatives. They were dairy farming at Mypolonga, near Murray Bridge on a farm of about sixty acres and they paid me ten bob ($1.00) per week. With this, I could buy a return bus fare into Murray Bridge, with enough change for a ticket to the pictures and a block of chocolate. At times the chocolate would give way to Orange Cream biscuits, or a milkshake, and then I’d be broke for the rest of the week. My wage included full keep for the twelve hours per day and the seven days a week I was working. They had promised me land and use of equipment to start my own place, but this never eventuated.

After a day’s work I tried to get into my mechanical studies, but soon found I was too tired to complete the course, but a flicker of interest in the mechanical side of the farm started a fire that was to burn brightly for years to come.

At the time we were using various makes of cars, tractors, of 1925, to 1934 vintage and other old machinery of doubtful parentage. The machine that comes to the front of my mind with persistence is the Binder. I firmly believe that anyone who worked a binder is in doubt of entering heaven. This one caused me no end of skinned knuckles, hot temper and a wariness of anything used to make hay. A bolt would break and allow the frame to sag. I would then have to find a heap of various sized mallee stumps to wedge it and somehow wriggle the bolt back in place with a crow bar. I despised that machine.

Realising that the promise of land may not come to fruition I decided to find another job. I started working on a mixed farm. We grew a nine hundred acre rotation of wheat and barley. We also had a good flock of sheep all running on a farm of three thousand acres. The pay was better and I was still doing all of the machinery maintenance. I learnt to arc weld using electricity supplied by a bank of batteries and a 32 volt generating system. For me to become a competent welder using this device offered plenty of challenges.

On the place at that time our main tractor was a 1939 Model L Case. Our nine hundred acre tillage programme included four hundred acres of new ground. I laugh with pride when I think back to that old Case and giving it a valve grind overnight. At four and a half acres per hour and with nine hundred acres to work four times per season it’s a good job we had no hour clock on the old girl. The only time we switched the tractor off was to drain its engine oil, or go to church, and sometimes I think she broke down just to take a rest.

The first three months of 1954 was spent at the pleasure of the Australian Army doing National Service. By now I’d had enough time of working for wages, and with the skills I’d gained, I was confident I could survive working for myself. So in April 1954 I took a deep breath and started a new business venture. I worked as a share farmer on a place seven miles west of Cummins on Eyre Peninsular and stayed with that until February 1955. For the following two years, I share-farmed near Ungarra, sowing wheat, barley and oats. I also worked with the manager of the merino sheep stud and found the work very interesting.

I’d always believed financial success for farmers would be in some way dependent on the machinery being reliable and I gave a high priority to regular maintenance. Some might say I was an original rev head and servicing my own vehicles kept me busy on weekends. I remember owning a 1953 FJ Holden that was stuffed. I back traded it on a ’36 Ford V8 without brakes with an idea to make it into a stock car. Bad Move!!!

Changes came in 1956 as I bought thirty acres of scrubby, limestone land at Port Lincoln. The new FE Holden ute I had on order was cancelled to help finance the land and the old Ford was traded on a Farmall A tractor. It was my only transport for the next six months. Being a particularly wet year and on one of the many slippery roads, I rolled the Farmall. In the interest of safety I lashed out and bought a 46 Chev Ute. By now I’d moved into a tin shed on my Port Lincoln property, better known to most as my thirty acre stone heap.

At the end of the 1957 season, I was in between jobs and bought an old Holden Ute from George Mayne’s, in Pt. Lincoln, it was still having its motor overhauled at the time. As I wanted to take delivery of it quickly, I suggested that I could help them to get the engine together and back into the vehicle. They agreed to my offer and I soon set about assisting them with the task.

Never one to let an opportunity pass, I thought that while I had their attention I’d also ask if there was any chance of getting a job as a tractor mechanic. My question met with success and I was given a fortnight to prove myself. At the time the business was changing over from George Mayne’s to Blacker Motors. The fortnight’s trial that I started on the seventh of February in 1958 lasted for four years, and I finished there in early March 1962.

While still working at Blacker Motors I married Gloria in August 1958 and we moved into my tin mansion as husband and wife.

During this period I learned how little I knew about the later model tractor offerings. Tractors like the new Fordson Farmrite etc. Even though I’d used a Farmrite for a year of share farming I needed to know more and was determined to improve my knowledge. By attending tractor schools, and studying the many different workshop manuals available, I soon became more skilled. With help from my foreman, Harry Box, it didn’t take me long to earn my place as a fully fledged Tractor Man. Not only as a mechanic, but with the training I’d had I now possessed the many skills required of a Tractor Man. I was at ease working as a demonstrator showing a prospective customer how to get the best from their machine. I believe these skills made me an all round salesperson, competent not only in tractors and machinery, but in cars and trucks too.

Power was always a challenge in the sandy soils of the West Coast and I would put two Fordson Farmrites in tandem and demonstrate them on farms about fifty miles apart. We worked an area from Pt Lincoln to Poochera travelling by road. The Horward Bagshaw 29 tyne scarifier was the hardest machine we had to pull and naturally we’d show off. One day we had a group of farmers assembled and at the top of a sand drift hill and while doing a turn the nut on the scarifier’s screwlift stripped. Sending the machine deeper, it went into frame level. Embarrassing, I’d buried the lot.

Now married, Gloria and I started a family and we went back to where my career began. We shifted to Cleve. It was late 62 when I returned to work for Blacker Motors at their Cleve branch, I was charged with looking after all Tractor and Machinery sales and service. All went well and it was a great time. Blacker Motors loaned me the deposit for house and land package, it was our first decent living home since getting married. In 1964, the business took on the Class Header franchise, which involved an extensive week’s service school in Albury. This was a difficult decision to make at the time, and I knew I was not going to be popular at home because while I was away our third child was born.
 
Bad days at work were few and far between but one I recall was having a new car catch on fire while demonstrating it to a prospective customer. I arrived at the customers house with smoke filling the cabin, the wiring loom had shorted and completely burnt out.

Ford would test their Falcons on our country roads. They tested the XM Falcons at Tulka near Pt Lincoln. The company would use experienced rally drivers for the trials, jumping these new models over the crests and sliding them around gravel corners. The XM Falcon was designed for tough Aussie conditions and to prove the new car to the sales teams, Ford organised a drive day. Dealer staff from near and far gathered to test this exciting new car. The rally drivers had used these very same roads hadn’t they? Well we had a go too. We bounced an XM through a dip and wiped the sump out of this new demonstrator. This was the first time in my life that I thought I might get fired.

Early in 1966 Blacker Motors offered the Cleve business and Ford franchise to my boss and manager of the branch, Gunther Boeke. He in turn, offered to take me into a partnership. I went round to some of my customers and found I could raise approx. $3000.00. In the meantime another employee of the Pt Lincoln branch waved his wallet and bought the Cleve set up from under us.

I cancelled the $3,000, and Gunther took up a partnership in the Pt. Lincoln set up. I was supposed to go back to Lincoln too, but there was no way in hell I was going to give up my new house. I began working the Lock region, and I travelled even further west as the area sales rep for the Blacker Motors Pt. Lincoln branch.

Blackers then got out of Ford, and took on Chrysler / Valiant cars, along with Oliver and Twin City tractors. Meanwhile the guy that bought the Cleve Ford business got cold feet and very bad nerves. He offered the whole show to me on unbelievable terms. Time for me to do another money round up. I went to get everything signed up but he’d had a heart attack and was found dead. Again I cancelled the money. By now, all of my customers wanted me to just stay and start up my own mechanical repair business,. They supported me and I rented a portion of a shed to get started. A fortnight’s pay, a worn out 1952 Ford Consul car and my toolboxes, and we’re in business. All the profit had to go into workshop equipment, but it all went well.

There were Ford Tractors in the district which were still in warranty, and Ford had arranged for any repairs to be billed through Curtis’s, at Tumby bay. They would come up about every six weeks and fill out all the warranty forms. The old Ford business in Cleve was now closed and empty. Ford kept on trying to sell me the Franchise and were asking $12,000 for it. I insisted I could not and would not raise that kind of cash. Eventually they asked if I could sell a tractor. To which I replied, of course I can sell tractors. So they arranged for me take orders for new tractors, and finance them through AGC.

I sold the first four tractors very quickly. Then back they came, asking how much can you raise now? I told them I could find about $3000.00. I was now a Ford Tractor and Machinery Dealer and the business boomed.

The next drama to unfold was when the Ford dealer in Kimba sacked his mechanic. There were many tractors broken down on the farms in the Kimba district, some still in pieces still being repaired. To add to the confusion, the dealer himself did a mid night disappearing act. I now had some very irate Kimba farmers screaming to get their tractors going. By this time I had two new utes and an old Falcon. My three mechanics were racing all over the country keeping machinery maintained. Ford asked me if I knew where they could get another dealer to take over the Kimba territory. I said, I’m right here and eventually the Kimba territory was combined into my Primary Market Area. All of this happened while we were working from a two tractor shed.

Our next move was to purchase more land and a build a new workshop. Done. Eighteen months later and we had doubled the size again. By now we had developed a modification to remedy the ever troublesome 5000 Select-o-speed transmissions. The improvement meant the transmission gave no further problems. But Ford’s engineers wouldn’t wear it. However it didn’t worry us, and our customers kept buying in confidence.

Front end loaders were extremely hard to get at the time, so to satisfy demand we started manufacturing our own. A little “agricultural” in appearance they worked extremely well and serviced a need. The Napier wide line cultivators became an excellent seller; at one stage we had twenty seven on order.

Recessions, wheat quotas, interest rates, and droughts, brought huge expensive changes to the whole farming industry. And naturally, to the tractor and farm machinery game. Many share farmers were forced out of business. To survive, small farmers had to find more land and get bigger or get out. This promoted bigger holdings that needed higher horsepower tractors and wider machinery to put in larger acres. Across the country the number of small farmers dropped and this had a severe impact on the sales of average sized tractors. The droughts caused a huge change in the traditional methods of farming, and very soon everyone had moved to minimum tillage. These were times of change.

I accepted the new challenge and took on Versatile tractors and imported their associated Canadian rod weeders, blade ploughs, and disc drill seeding systems. Air-seeders offered a new means of sowing with relative precision and soon were all the go. In 1977 I’d sold enough Versatile tractors to win a trip to Canada. The company said I could take the trip or they would give the value in money. I opted for the money. We were told we’d won again the following year and offered a similar deal. I said that I hadn’t received the money as promised for the first year yet, and so I wasn’t about to repeat the decision. In the end Gloria and I were able to participate in the tour and had a wonderful eleven days, it was an experience of a lifetime.

We were riding high and the business was going well during this period. A highlight was taking out the prestigious ‘Best Machinery Display’ at the Eyre Peninsular Field Days in 1978, however things were about to change. I didn’t allow for three years of drought. To experience three droughts in a row was unheard of on Eyre Peninsula and I didn’t or couldn’t downgrade as quickly as other dealers. The early eighties crippled many farmers and in turn machinery dealers dropped like flies.

We decided to sell the Cleve operations and concentrate on Kimba, and built another workshop up there. Staff numbers fell from a peak of 22 down to 5. But it was too little too late. We sold out to Anders at Freeling, but I stayed with the business for another five years.

My worst day at work, all I can say is that it’s not something I’d want published. However my best day at work is an entirely different story. Soon after I became a Ford Tractor Dealer, they released a new 97 horsepower tractor, the Ford 7000. I organised a farmers field day and after a successful demonstration of the tractor, I took four orders in two hours.

 

Most of my life I have been self employed. You could say that I have tried everything from the sales of hydroponic systems, to women’s clothing and everything in between. About 1985 Gloria and I opened a ladies fashion shop in Port Lincoln. The business sold clothing for women, and we stocked knitting wool along with other fashion accessories. We called the business Gloria’s Wood Wool &Rags as we sold my handmade wooden clocks and barometers from the same store. To compliment the business we ran Party Plans. We partied with Hydroponics, Pottery, and Perfumes. When one of us was out on a party plan the other would run the shop. We gave the shop away around 1988. There were too many miles and not enough profit to remain viable.

The giftware I made, the clocks, barometers, mirrors etc I crafted from various materials. Around Cleve we had plenty of mallee stumps and this became a favourite material to use.

 

Around early to mid 2000 Gloria took over running the TAFE Canteen. It became much more than just a canteen as eventually it expanded to cater for weddings and large functions. The success of this business meant we were now catering at the Port Lincoln Racecourse.

In accepting to take over the Racecourse canteen we had inherited a catering business with a shocking reputation and it was a huge challenge.

 

Our first task was a major clean up of the canteen and its kitchen. The original brief was to supply a range of pies, pasties, sausage rolls and sandwiches. There was a small dining room for visiting officials and we would service them with quick light meals.

Over time we expanded the menu to include takeaway. Some meetings could be unpredictable and we would cater for between fifteen hundred to three thousand people some days, while a big meeting would see as many as five thousand people at the track. The challenge was enormous. My role was to get this, get that, and sometimes to: ‘get out of the bloody way’. Along with the shopping that could involve up to four trips into town. I would count the tills, organise the wages to pay the staff and try to keep everyone happy.

Our biggest challenge for catering came in the form of providing a Dinner for the 100^th Anniversary Celebrations of the Waybacks Port Lincoln Football Club. We had six hundred and thirty people to feed and from a kitchen no bigger than you would find in a caravan. The Basketball Stadium could hold the guests but its kitchen couldn’t feed them. Our challenge was to build an industrial kitchen for the event.

The council agreed for us to cut into the 3-phase power and access the gas supply to feed the gas stoves and hot water systems we’d hired. We had over nineteen 10amp outlets and used extension cords to manage the rest. We provided a three course meal for the occasion. Roast beef and pork cooked in the kitchen ovens from four different homes and transported hot to the venue. To service the crowd we employed six deep fryers and four large Bain-maries. The night went well and we received a letter of appreciation and a standing ovation from the diners. Photos from the night swell us with pride.

Over the years I gained a lot of pleasure by restoring a lot of tractors and selling them to people to use to put their boats in and out of the water. I’ve made plenty of furniture in my time too. Along the way I became expert at servicing fishing boat hydraulic systems and carrying out engine repairs. But last and definitely not least is our catering business. Over time I have had many jobs I thought were the best one, but looking back there were many days like that.

One of the times I look back on with fondness during my career was working with Versatile Tractors and the associated equipment we supplied at that time. This was at the end of the seventies and early eighties and farming practices were changing. I look back with a certain satisfaction that by being able to provide my customers with a product that improved their farming practices and overall efficiency. These advances allowed them to time their cropping better and make greater profits.

The challenges I see for the farm machinery industry over the next few years will be the operating, and the initial costs of replacing equipment. To produce food at a competitive price is fast coming to a stage where overseas producers will have a monopoly. In this I fear the biggest danger will be that many small Australian farmers will not survive the market pressure created by imports and forcing them to sell their farms. This will provide an opportunity for giant overseas corporations to increase buying large tracts of Australia’s richest farmland. The biggest downside is the quality produce will be shipped overseas, leaving everyday Australians with lower grade produce.

These days Gloria and I live on the Fleurieu Peninsular and I still harbour a passion to one day restore tractors. Now retired, I find plenty of things to do with family and have many other commitments. Who knows, I still dream that one day I’ll have a bigger shed and energy enough to fill it with some old machines that are nice to have.