THE Jim Gleeson SAGA

Purchaser of the parts

We heard that Gleesons was selling all his old car stock back in early 2000 so my Accountant and another mate shot down to Napier to see what the story was. Jim Gleeson had been in the parts business all his life and mostly bought new stock when companies moved or folded and didn’t want to take all unsold stock with them. I came from Hawkes Bay and had dealt with Jim Gleeson on many occasions, and he had bought an old boarding house which had belonged to our family at some stage. You either clicked with Jim and could follow him through his hoard of parts, or you didn’t, and you had to stand right there and wait. If you moved or got cheeky, he either wouldn’t sell you the item or would pick up whatever was closest and chase you out of the building fortunately I clicked.

The three of us had never seen such a vast collection of new old stock parts spread through five buildings around Napier. We took a parts manager, and another mate who owned a wrecking yard through the buildings then sat down, and all came up with the same price or thereabouts which was only half what he was asking for it. We knew Jim would be tough to deal with as there were always plenty of stories around Hawkes Bay from people who didn’t have any luck dealing with him, so we produced an extensive list of conditions. We would empty the buildings in a specific order and only take selected items from some buildings as there was a lot of junk and buggered old car bodies which we didn’t want the cost of dumping. We would keep a portion of the purchase price back and pay Jim a wage from it to help us identify items which had fallen out of their packets. He was to help us identify parts for a few hours each morning until we got a full load. If he stuck with the program, he would get the balance at the end of the procedure. If he spat the dummy, he would lose the balance. Anything could upset Jim, and then he had a short fuse all day. He nutted off at Pam one day despite the fact that she was taking him meals every day, and she told him to go home till he changed his attitude. Straight after he left, we realised he would see this as being fired, so we wrote a letter saying he wasn’t fired, and we expected him at work the next day. It took weeks to get him back to work. We had to have him there to do this, or a lot of stuff would become worthless.