Barrie steps aside after 63 years in business

Barrie steps aside after 63 years in business

Well-known electrician Barrie Buck is officially hanging up his pliers.

He’ll still be doing “bits and pieces” in his shed, but the time has come to step away from a business he started in 1961.

Barrie was 20 years old and new to town at the time. Following his older brother John north from the Hutt Valley, he arrived in Levin on a Sunday and started work on Monday. 

He’d already served his apprenticeship, including wiring a large part of Wainuiomata and a long stint working at the Ngauranga freezing works, where he says he gained valuable knowledge of industrial electrical needs.  

There was work available with established electricians, but he backed himself to go out on his own.

“It was a gamble in a way and I was told not to do it, but I was single at the time and I could see there was an opening within the trade because in those days there was so much industry in Levin,” he says.

“There weren’t many into the industrial side of things.”

In those pre-Muldoon days Levin was a boom manufacturing town. On Barrie’s books were businesses like Pioneer Caravans, Lane’s Hosiery, Levin Dyeworks, Penn Elastics, Levana Textiles, KGH Printing, among others.

He even had a hand in wiring up the Levin town traffic lights, and Levin mall when it was built in the early 1970s.

Barrie says a cornerstone to longevity in business is trust.

“There were clients that had been with us for 30 or more years. You build a rapport with people and you develop trust on both sides,” he says. “And if you don’t look after your clients someone else will.”

Barrie says he’s seen recessions come and go, and says the secret is to “weather them as best you can”.

“It’s a cycle,” he says.

There have been phenomenal changes in technology in that time, too, and one of the things Barrie’s always done is try to keep up with those changes.

The business has been a family affair, with his father Roly, wife Mary and children Raewyn, Ally and Andrew all having worked at BG Buck Ltd.

In the early days there was a “cot in the corner”.

Barrie trained nine apprentices over the years, too.

BG  Buck Ltd has officially been sold to B&M Electrical, although it’s very much business as usual as all staff have been retained.

“I’d like to wish B&M all the best for the future in the knowledge they will offer clients the dedication and expertise we had the privileged of giving over the last 63 years,” Barrie says.