JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

The changing face of Neal and Massy

by

20140713

The re­cent re­brand­ing of the for­mer Neal and Massy Group's as­sets to a brash new gener­ic name–Massy–ap­par­ent­ly did not sit well with many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who took to Face­book and Twit­ter en masse to protest the loss of brands which had sol­diered on for decades and had be­come very much a part of the na­tion­al land­scape.Para­mount among these changes that stung the loy­al­ist sen­si­bil­i­ties was the changed name of the ven­er­a­ble Hi-Lo food­stores which be­gan op­er­a­tions in 1950. Hi-Lo was the brain­child of Gor­don Graves New who con­vert­ed the old Fer­nan­dez Gro­cery (it­self an evo­lu­tion of the an­cient Ice House Gro­cery dat­ing back to 1844) in­to Trinidad's first cash-and-car­ry su­per­mar­ket. New was the son-in-law of the is­land's largest pro­vi­sion­er, Ernest Can­ning, and soon the string of Can­ning's Gro­ceries had be­come Hi-Los. The con­cern was ac­quired by Neal and Massy in 1975–which it­self was the merg­er of two icons of the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try.

Charles Massy met ad­ver­si­ty with en­er­gy. Born in 1897, he was forced to cur­tail his sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege when his co­coa farmer fa­ther suf­fered fi­nan­cial loss­es. Tak­ing up a clerk­ship at the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da on Ma­rine (now In­de­pen­dence) Square, Charles soon left that en­ter­prise to en­list in the British Army dur­ing the Great War (1914-18), even­tu­al­ly see­ing ac­tion on the Eu­ro­pean front.Back in Trinidad af­ter the war, he fell in with the Trinidad Im­port and Ex­port Co, a firm which could trace its roots back to the great Scot­tish mer­chant and phil­an­thropist, Gre­gor Turn­bull, in the late 1840s. Charles, de­spite his mea­gre for­mal ed­u­ca­tion, was al­ways an in­no­va­tor and com­bined his sav­ings with a loan to form an au­to­mo­bile deal­er­ship in 1924 called Massy Ltd. The firm was lo­cat­ed ini­tial­ly on Ma­rine Square and had the fran­chise for Rug­by, Du­rant, Ply­mouth, De So­to and Chrysler cars, Di­a­mond Reo and Thorny­croft trucks as well as BSA, AJS and Match­less mo­tor­cy­cles. The Stude­bak­er brand was lat­er ac­quired from Y De Li­ma and Co (the fa­mous jew­el­ry em­po­ri­um) who had im­port­ed Flan­ders, EMF and Stude­bak­er cars since 1912. Massy al­so sold oil­field equip­ment since the pe­tro­le­um age was in full swing.

Great De­pres­sion

The col­lapse of the Amer­i­can stock ex­change trig­gered the Great De­pres­sion in the 1930s and Massy was forced by his cred­i­tors to merge with a ri­val wheel­er-deal­er, Har­ry Neal, to form Neal and Massy Ltd in 1932. Har­ry Neal was born in Eng­land in 1875 and was a trained en­gi­neer. He came out to Trinidad in 1913 to man­age the Trinidad Pro­duce Co but struck out on his own in 1922. Neal brought in the valu­able Gen­er­al Mo­tors fran­chise (Chevro­let, Buick, Vaux­hall, Opel and Bed­ford Trucks) as well as the all-im­por­tant deal­er­ship for Cater­pil­lar heavy equip­ment. The in­no­va­tion that Neal En­gi­neer­ing Co pi­o­neered was the full-ser­vice car deal­er­ship. As the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Dupont Paints and Dun­lop tires, ve­hi­cles sold by the com­pa­ny could re­ceive com­plete pro­fes­sion­al main­te­nance from tire re­cap­ping to a full paint job. "Duco" be­came a com­mon noun for au­to­body works in Trinidad in this era as a re­sult. Massy pushed for the es­tab­lish­ment of a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary, Trac­tors and Ma­chin­ery Ltd (Trac­mac) to deal ex­clu­sive­ly in agri­cul­tur­al and in­dus­tri­al ma­chines, in­clud­ing the Cater­pil­lar brand and Massey (lat­er Massey-Fer­gu­son) trac­tors.

Neal and Massy's ear­ly op­er­a­tions in Port-of-Spain were on Tra­garete Road, but in San Fer­nan­do, the firm oc­cu­pied the old Ten­nant's Hard­ware build­ing on King's Wharf which is known to most as the "1911" build­ing at that lo­ca­tion. The busi­ness rapid­ly out­grew this site and moved to a new fa­cil­i­ty in Les Ef­forts in the 1950s.Since sug­ar­cane was still an im­por­tant eco­nom­ic main­stay, Massy turned his ge­nius to in­vent­ing and mod­i­fy­ing sev­er­al pieces of tillage equip­ment un­der the Mas­cane brand. Massy had sev­er­al of these patent­ed and they be­came stan­dard equip­ment un­der the Cater­pil­lar mar­que. In the 1960s Massy over­saw the es­tab­lish­ment of a ve­hi­cle as­sem­bly plant in Mor­vant. Full of years and con­tri­bu­tions, he died peace­ful­ly in 1968.

The Neal and Massy as­sem­bly plant im­port­ed com­plete­ly knocked down (CKD) Vaux­hall and Bed­ford ve­hi­cles for as­sem­bly. In the 1960s the first ma­jor Japan­ese brand made its en­try with the com­ing of the Dat­sun 1200. A new as­sem­bly plant was con­struct­ed near Ari­ma which closed in the ear­ly 1990s when CKD cars be­came un­avail­able.The Neal and Massy op­er­a­tion was the first to im­port Ko­re­an cars which be­came a se­ri­ous pres­ence in the lo­cal mar­ket. Though the group's op­er­a­tions ex­pand­ed to en­com­pass en­er­gy, fi­nance and re­al es­tate hold­ings, the au­to­mo­tive em­pire pi­o­neered by Charles Massy and Har­ry Neal is the foun­da­tion of one of the na­tion's largest con­glom­er­ates.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored