Country services face hard times

Press, 19 May 1980, Page 11

Country services face hard times

Rangiora reporter Country stores and petrol pumps may soon be history. The' struggle to make them viable is forcing these sendees to close. The Saltwater Creek garage near Leithfield. North Canterbury, closed its petrol pumps this week and the Sefton store has closed. Owners of both ventures believe they will be the first of many to make the move. Headier and BarryGiles. of the Saltwater Creek garage, found the lack of profit and inconvenience of running petrol pumps frustrating. They closed their pumps recently. Mr Robbie Bruerton. of Sefton, who runs a Four Square store and a garage, has just closed the shop because of lack of support. He believes the town will suffer financially and socially. Mr and Mrs Giles decided to do away with the “window dressing” of running pumps because it was uneconomic. The small country business sold about $5OOO of petrol a month at a 6 per cent profit margin. They

made S3OO profit, but with pump overheads and the loss of labour they ended up with $3O. and still having to pay for power for the pumps.

They .estimated that Mr Giles spent on an average one hour a day serving petrol. This resulted in a loss of $270 of profit a month in his lost time in the workshop.

Mrs Giles said that if she went to the garage to serve petrol to allow her husband to concentrate on repairs she would spend a lot of time just sitting. She said that the business had built up a good clientele . for repairs and servicing during the 13 years they had been at the garage. Petrol sales had been “window dressing.” Only 10 per cent of petrol sales went to local people. Cash for petrol had also had its effect; people had bought their petrol from any garage. There was no loyalty to any one petrol station because petrol could not be bought on credit. Station owners had to pay for petrol on delivery which meant cash for petrol. Mr Bruerton opened his store in Seftcn last February after the town had

been without a store for 2 years and a half. It was opened in conjunction with his garage business. “I felt that if I got a living out of the district, I could give the area something in return,” he said. ”1 wanted to make it a community meeting place, a focal point and. draw, the community closer together. This happened to a degree, but people tended to go to Rangiora to shop.” Mr Bruerton said to make it an economic venture families in the district would have had to spend $lO to $l5 a week' “It was never meant to be a shop for hig orders. It was a necessity shop.” Mr Bruerton said that without a store property values in the town would be affected and the community's elderly people would be isolated unless they had a car. They would have to leave the community because there was nowhere to shop. Wives in Sefton would virtually have to have a second car to do their shopping because many of the town’s meh worked out of the area and took the family car to work, he said.