My life story, Henry J Macey [books for 20 year olds .TXT] 📗

let me sell two contracts in those first weeks, he had the sales but it was a good learning curve for me. After five weekends I had made up my mind this was the job for me, and I became part of the firm.

 

I was now a building consultant, not bad after only five weekends I was an expert. The homes we built were the single story of good quality and range, with some very good designs. The most popular seller was the basic layout; three bedrooms bathroom open plan living room & kitchen, utility room double carport plus kitchen patio.

 

This design came with a host of varying facades, to suit the taste of the buyer. The most popular of these was the Mediterranean or Roman; there were others such as Mexican, Spanish, and Californian. The houses were the same inside; it was only their outward appearances that changed.

 

I took to the job as if I had been doing it for years. The hours I worked were up to me, I did most of my selling in the late evenings. At this time of night both partners were home, and most times I could get a contract signed. If you met with just one partner you would get, I'll have to talk it over and let you know.

 

As I was paid on what I sold, you had to set a target of contracts to sell to get good weeks pay. The contract was only signed when the building society agreed to the loan. To me, a contract was worth one hundred & fifty dollars, fifty dollars when the contract was signed and the hundred dollars when the roof went on eight weeks later. It was at this time the building society would pay up.

 

I worked seven days a week to start with and set myself a modest target at four a week. That would give Jane a little less than I was earning on Bell’s, but after the eight weeks, we would be on the good money.

 

At weekends I would man one of the show homes, we had several sites by now. By making appointments with the people who came around, I could sometimes see five to six clients a day. At times they would sign a contract at the show home, on their first visit. After a short time, I got clients by word of mouth from past clients, I gave a finder’s fee of twenty-five dollars for every contract signed. In this way, my modest target of four was well below what I did achieve.

 

Now the job got easy as clients came to me knowing what they wanted, having friends who had moved into homes bought through me. I took up the game of golf and played two or three times a week. I was about to tee off one day when I was asked if I would like to join some other golfers to make up a foursome.

 

As we played we introduced ourselves, one of the players asked me if I would have a drink with him after the game. As we sat in the clubhouse he asked if he could look at my portfolio of buildings as he may be in the market to buy. I agreed to let him have a spare folder I had in the car, and we made a date to play golf the following week.

 

As I drove into the car park of the golf course, he was waiting for me with his golf clubs and my folder in hand. All around the course, he asked me questions, did we guarantee our work, completion dates and a host of others. I smelt a sale in the air and went into salesman mode. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he told me he would like to negotiate a deal for six houses. After that, I would make a point of asking if a potential client played golf as it was a good place to do business.

 

Speculators with capital from club investors would build a complex of houses for sale to boost their profits. A leisurely stroll around a golf course, chatting as we played brought many a good deal one deal I remember was for fifty houses, it netted me five thousand five hundred dollars. It took six weeks to seal the deal and started me smoking again.

 

Let me explain that last sentence, I had given up smoking for two years. On the sixth week of trying to convince this agent to sign the contract, he phoned me asking if my wife and I would join him and his wife for a meal. We met at the restaurant of his choice and had a very fine meal. As we got to the coffee and biscuits, he said I see you go nowhere without your briefcase. I answered you never know when you might need it, do I need it now. He laughed then said get it out he was ready to sign. As I was getting the papers ready he took out a cigar case, I took one as he offered me the case. I was halfway down that cigar, and it was a big one before I looked at it saying I don’t smoke.

 

Once I got this first fifty-house contract built and sold, many others followed. The money was flowing into the bank balance; I was doing so well at this job. I was so full of confidence; I could not understand why the head of the company asked me to go on a self-motivation course. He would pay all expenses, for the course was for high rollers and commanded a high fee.

 

As I was now dealing with high profile businessmen he thought that the company and ultimately I would benefit from this course designed to boost the confidence and stature of the candidate. He was somewhat disappointed when I came out of the course no better than I went in. The main objective of the course was to break the spirit of the candidate, then rebuild his confidence. They could not break mine, so I stayed the same. All went well for about a year and a half then the housing trade took a dive.

 

One Monday morning we went into the office to find a note on the front door exclaiming the firm had gone bankrupt, we found this very strange as the bricklayers were still building houses. We tried to phone, but could not get in touch with the owner, I never saw him again or the money I had coming. I did the rounds of other building company’s, but most were looking to shed job’s not put on. So with reluctance, I went back to driving heavy trucks, part-time at first just as a relief driver for holidays or sickness. Then Owen came up with an offer, if I got a truck he would see I had all the work I needed.

I went for it although my heart was not into it, I had heard many stories of my old driving mates nearly killing themselves, just trying to keep their trucks or their wife’s. So I just hired one for six months, to see how I got on with being an owner drive if all went well I would buy one. I soon found out it was a cutthroat business, there were too many subcontractors looking for to little work.

 

To be honest, Owen did keep me busy in that first seven day week, I did six thousand and eighty miles all at the road-train rate. That gave me three thousand and forty dollars gross; the truck was costing me two hundred and fifty a week. The road tax at five cents per mile per trailer, for that week, was six hundred and forty. Fuel at five miles to the gallon, (now don’t quote me but I think diesel was near to fifty cents a gallon back then.) Tyre wear was equal to two tyres, at one hundred and ten dollars each.

 

That works out not bad, but you can’t keep working a twenty-hour day, day in day out. And not always have road-trains on every trip or that amount of mileage. The best-paid jobs were to the eastern states, a trip of over three thousand miles, across the Nullarbor Plain. The road was littered with the lost dreams of truck drivers, the cost of recovery or repair sent many out of business.

 

With high penalties for late delivery, drivers would push themselves and their trucks to the limit. Some drivers took to stay awake pills to keep themselves going, but in the end over tiredness lead to illness. Then they lost work because they became unreliable, the companies just turned their backs on them. They did not care about individuals; they had a long list of owner-drivers looking for work. I just did Western Australian journeys, mostly trailers to Geraldton. Returning with trailers loaded with produce from the plantations of Carnarvon, destined for Perth’s fruit market.

 

TAXI

 

We heard that some local taxi plates were coming on the market, so Jane and I applied for them. We had a meeting with the taxi licensing board and it went well. But first, we had to pass the taxi-driving test. This meant learning all the streets in the area we were to operate in. Plus all the hospitals, railway stations airports and the shortest route to them.

 

Having limited taxi plates meant you could carry passengers outside your area but had to return to it before you could pick up another fare. The city cabs could pick up in the city, drop that fare in our area and sit on our rank picking up local fares until they got one to return to the city with.

 

We passed all the tests and were told we would get the plates. Getting in touch with the Black and White taxi firm that the other local drivers ran under, we signed with them. They supplied the radio and gave us the number 36 as a call sign. Having bought a new Ford Falcon 500 we had no trouble with the car; taxis were not allowed to be too old.

 

Now we had to wait for the plates. When they arrived they were "taxi 004" - three more digits and I could have called myself "James Bond". In those days lady drivers could not drive in the hours of darkness. So I would start at four o'clock and work until eight, returning home for breakfast. Jane would take the boys to school then book on.

 

I would have a nap then do some jobs around the house. I would take over again after Jane had picked the boys up from school and work until midnight. There was not always enough work to keep all the taxis busy, so we worked a roster at night. Half the cabs would be on duty, half on stand-by.

 

It was always busy on weekends so we had our days off in the week. Later I bought a two and a half-ton panel truck and ran it as a taxi truck, being controlled by Black & White Taxis. The meters were set at the same fares as the cabs. The fare would start when we loaded the item for delivery.