An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

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.