Retiring After 40 Years With Transport Board

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31412, 4 July 1967, Page 16

Retiring After 40 Years With Transport Board

A man who has trained more than 1400 men to drive the Christchurch Transport Board’s trams and buses in the last 18 years will retire on Friday. He is Mr R. H. Smith, motor inspector with the board since 1949, who will have completed 40 years’ service. Mr Smith said Christchurch had the finest fleet and the best staff of any transport board in New Zealand.

“That’s not just patriotism. Our fleet is standardised where others are not; and our staff gets more kudos for courtesy from the public than does any other.”

Mr Smith known at the board offices as “R.H.,” joined the staff as a tram conductor on August 1, 1927. “For that job, working a

13-day fortnight, I was paid £5 16s a week. Today, the minimum wage for a bus driver doing a 10-day fortnight is about £38.” Mr Smith qualified as a tram driver in 1930 and in 1936 began driving buses. Since his appointment as motor inspector in 1949 he has been responsible for all driver training. “To learn to drive a tram, a driver had to complete 168 hours on his own before he went for a qualifying ride with a motor inspector whose job it was to arrange with the Marine Department for the issue of drivers’ certificates,” said Mr Smith. According to old-timers with the company, driving trams was the best job of the lot, he said. “When the board converted to buses no man was to lose his job. Everyone was given the opportunity to be trained as a bus driver. Only two men did not avail themselves of this,” he said. Mr Smith is the last of the board’s employees who took part in a strike in 1932 over the firing of 12 men. In his retirement Mr Smith intends to travel around the country with his caravan. At his home he has a wellequipped workshop which he believes will occupy most of his spare time.