Darren’s father, Barry Wales, initially started the business for cars and taught himself how to spray paint and panel beat. When times got tough, he called upon a few of his friends from his previous career in cake delivery to get a couple of trucks to him, allowing the business to branch out into heavy vehicles.
“That’s about the time that I joined the business,” Darren says. “After school I did an accounting course and then I went down and started on the floor at Dad’s shop. He was probably a bit harder on me than anyone else because he didn’t want me working in a panel shop, he wanted me to pursue my accounting background. I think my first job in the place was cleaning the toilets.”
During the next 15 years Darren got his apprenticeship to become a qualified vehicle painter and spent time at the shop doing all sorts of jobs with his father, such as panel beating and spray painting.
“Around 20 years ago I started to take the business over from Dad,” he says. “I purchased a share of the business from him – he took a back seat from there and I started to grow the business. He’s still a very important part of my life. Although he’s been retired for many years pursuing other interests, there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t talk to him about how work’s going, because he’s my mentor and best mate.”
In 2015, Darren identified a gap in the market and purchased a facility in Smithfield solely for the purpose of bus repairs and got a large portion of the bus industry on side. By recruiting key personnel with many years of experience within the bus industry, Darren was able to form relationships with some of the biggest bus companies in Australia.
“We saw a bit of a niche in the market – no one specifically was doing just buses. An old employee of mine went out to start up on his own and he was doing buses for another company. He had a falling out and then he came back to us and put the idea into our heads, and we saw that gap and grew it from there.”
Earlier this year, Darren won a Lifetime Achievement Award from National Collision Repairer which recognised his contributions to the formation of the Australian Heavy Vehicle Repairers Association.
“That came out of the blue,” he says. “It was an industry nominated award that I knew nothing about. I was very humbled to receive it, there was certainly some prestigious people who came before me who had won the award.
“I’m extremely humbled to not only to be nominated for it but to win it, and more so for the recognition that we’ve done in the industry and away from it. We do a lot of mentoring with young apprentices, we employ a few people with disabilities, and we really try and make it a very inclusive place to work.”
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