52 | CONTRACTING McKay Mechanical Dream realised for busy diesel mechanic Based in Tapawera, Mckay Mechanical services clients as far afield as Golden Bay to the north and Murchison to the south. T T Hugh de Lacy Given that being a diesel mechanic was all he ever wanted to do, Dan McKay is in an ideal space working as a sole operator for farmers and agricultural contractors out of a shared workshop in Tapawera, about 40km south-west of Nelson. Growing up on his parents’ lifestyle block in Upper Moutere on Tasman Bay, from a young age Dan was fascinated with the array of machinery used on the many and varied forms of agriculture and horticulture the Nelson area is famed for. Dan went out on his own just two years ago after nearly 20 years in the trade, during which he completed his diesel mechanic’s apprenticeship with the former Gough’s Caterpillar company, initially in Nelson, and then for years with the same company at the giant Macraes gold mine in West Otago. A move to Hokitika saw him working there successively for machinery suppliers Komatsu NZ and the John Deere agency, then known as Gordon Handy Ltd. He and wife Katy subsequently moved to Wakefield, setting up the workshop in Tapawera, 20 minutes’ drive away, in the premises of local agricultural contracting company Fry Contracting. Dan does some work for Fry, but services clients as far afield as Golden Bay to the north and Murchison to the south. Katy, who has a background as a medical receptionist, handles McKay Mechanical’s books, and when Dan goes to work for farmers on D’Urville Island, she and the couple’s three children are able to accompany him, staying in a family friend’s bach. “Dan mostly operates out of a ute he’s got fully set up as a service vehicle, maintaining and repairing farm machinery on-site, but he also does major jobs like transmission overhauls back at the Tapawera workshop,” Katy says. “He has things like tractors delivered there for him to work on, but other smaller machinery like mowers he’s able to take to the workshop on a trailer, so he ends up with his time split roughly evenly between working in the workshop and off the back of the ute.” It all adds up to a pretty enviable lifestyle, and the couple have no firm plans to expand the business by taking on staff, though they do have a couple of people ready to give Dan a hand when he needs it. One avenue the couple is exploring to grow the business is taking on sales and servicing for a machinery brand if they can find a suitable one. “We’d quite like to have some sort of opportunity like that, and we’ve got our eyes open for anything that might turn up,” Katy says. In the meantime though, Dan has got his hands full solving the service and maintenance problems of farmers and contractors in his chunk of the Nelson region. “Dan covers a pretty large swathe of territory and it involves quite a bit of travel, but he enjoys being out and about and interacting with the farmers in the district,” Katy says. WE’LL KEEP YOU OPERATING 0800 747 835 24/7 MOBILE HYDRAULIC HOSE REPAIR SERVICE PIRTEK NELSON IS PROUD TO SUPPORT MCKAY MECHANICAL WITH ALL THEIR HOSE AND FITTING REQUIREMENTS General Engineering, Forestry machine maintenance, Heavy transport, Hop farm maintenance & builds 027 511 9322 | broadengineering@yahoo.com Talk to us today, the feature profile experts Phone: 03 983 5500 waterfordpress.co.nz PROFILE YOUR PROJECT...
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=