April 20, 2021
Care for workers wins award for coast trucking company
The winner of a major agribusiness prize says looking after its workers and the community is critical to the success of the business.
Rangitukia-based log hauling company Rewi Haulage Limited won the Maori Agribusiness Award in this year’s Primary Industries Good Employer Awards.
Director Chubb Rewi started the company with his wife Agnes in 2014 with one truck and now has a fleet of nine units and 19 staff, almost all Ngāti Porou.
They’ve made the distance from major population centres an asset, adding subsidiary businesses including a tyre-fitting and servicing workshop, a mechanical call-out unit, a slash recovery unit which provides the Ruatoria mill with slash that is converted to fence batons, and a licensing and driver training programme.
He says trucking in the region is dominated by large corporates, but they leave enough gaps for a smaller company to make a go of it, especially one driven by strong values.
"A lot of it is the treatment of the workers, they're not numbers to u. We look at an employee as a family, and that family supports the local kura, supports the local schools, and in turn that supports the community, so we've looked at it on that basis," he says.
Chubb Rewi says the next project is setting up a private training institute because people in the area who can’t afford to study in Gisborne to gain job skills.
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