Steve and Kelly-Anne Galbraith proudly run a family business where the employees are considered family, too.

“Everyone here is treated equal,” Kelly-Anne tells us. “One of the things we say to our team is, ‘This is a family’. Yes, we have our own family, but this is also our family.”

Kelly-Anne is a family-oriented mother and businesswoman. Hawke’s Bay has always been home, and life has revolved around raising a family. “I ran a beauty therapy business from home to be around the kids, because Steve wasn’t home much with his job at the time,” she says.

“But then I decided I would like to be an ambulance officer and have now been with St John for 10 years. I started with first responder training and then got my diploma in ambulance practice. As our current business has grown, my involvement with St John has become less … but I love it, so still do what I can with events and the like for them.”

Steve has always been involved with machinery, starting with driving his dad’s agricultural tractors from the age of seven, on road and in paddocks. “I did nine hay seasons before I even left school,” he says.

“I grew up in Porongahau, then Waipukurau, Wairoa, and have been here in the Bay since 2002. This is all I’ve done; I left school at 14 to work for an agricultural contractor. At 15, I moved to a forestry camp at Mohaka to work for Joe Gair. Apart from a four-year break, I worked for Joe until he passed away in 2016.”

The move into business

The tough forestry life with Joe was good grounding for young Steve. “Joe was a hard man, but real good to us. He was brilliant to work for, and he was like a second father to me … but if you did something wrong, be prepared!

“I was an operator first, then a young supervisor as the team grew. Before long, I was running jobs and having to deal with older staff members. It was never an issue for them to listen to me because I’d been around a while, and they respected that. By the time I was in my 20s, the two of us were managing about 60 staff.

With Joe’s passing, Steve was left doing his job as well, with his phone ringing from 4am to 11pm, seven days a week. It was time for a change. “We jumped in Kelly-Anne’s car, went to Auckland and bought a digger,” Steve says. That was January 2017, and with that purchase, Galbraith Earth Movers was formed.

The company has expanded every year. “It was supposed to be Steve and a machine, with me sending the occasional invoice,” Kelly-Anne comments, to which Steve adds, “Yeah, we did that for a while … probably about two or three weeks before we realised we needed another digger, which followed a few months later.

“Our first project was a house site in Taradale, then a guy wanted us to build his whole subdivision, which took about two years, so we needed even more machinery. And we still do work for him today.”

Steve comments that there has never been a point at which there was no work – an advantage of catering to various sectors. For example, the company collaborates closely with Pan Pac and FMNZ (Forest Management New Zealand) and does a lot of work for KiwiRail in the region.

“As we’ve grown, we’ve just put more equipment and trucks on. There’s always been plenty of work for us. Since February, we’ve been carting 5000 tonne of rock from Rainbow Mountain at Rotorua back to here.”

The team

The respect Steve and Kelly Anne have for their staff shines through. Clearly, it works both ways, with employees spreading themselves over different areas when needed. There are truck drivers who double as machinery operators, a mechanic who also drives diggers, bulldozers and trucks, and then there are the truck drivers who just keep on trucking.

Having a mix of younger and older drivers is important to Kelly-Anne and Steve. “We are grateful to have older generations here who are happy to teach the younger ones – they have to learn from somewhere,” Kelly-Anne says. “I’ve seen it a lot where the older guys won’t do that because they’re afraid the younger ones will take their jobs,” Steve adds.

“We have a young guy who came to us at 15 years old. He worked his way up to class 5 and is also one of our digger drivers. We worked him into it like they used to in the old days.”

Kelly-Anne laughs and says, “They have to come through me first! We pretty much hand-pick our staff. If they’re not willing to listen and learn, they don’t last.

“One of our guys sent us an email – he had finished year 13 at school and had done well. His heritage is from a well-known concrete company in the Bay, but he didn’t want to do concrete. From his email, I knew I had to talk to this young man. As soon as we sat down, I liked his mannerisms and the way he spoke. I told him we would take him on a trial basis and organised the paperwork there and then. When he asked me if he could please take his phone out to check his bank information, I was sold! He’s in his second year with us now, and he’s doing well … nothing’s a problem for him. Those are the ones you really have to look after.”

Steve chirps in, “He started his learning in the workshop, doing pre-starts, before going out on-site on machinery. He has become a whiz on the loader!”

Having a great team has significantly contributed to the company’s success. Several staff have previously worked alongside Steve, with some working together in previous employment. General manager John Birkett worked with Steve for years. “He does so much – pricing, running jobs, even taking tenders home for bedtime reading!” says Steve.

Let’s not forget the importance of admin. Kelly-Anne is joined in the office by Bex Stokes and Gerdie McKinley. The camaraderie in this small team is evident. Kelly-Anne adds, “Our health and safety advisor Kat Furniss was a machinery operator for more than 20 years. She knows what she’s looking for and sees everything!”

She laughs and adds, “Girls make the team!”

The big event

Being a Hawke’s Bay-based company, we can’t ignore the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023. Despite falling into two overlapping evacuation zones, the Galbraiths were luckily unaffected, with only ankle deep water flowing through the yard and down the driveway.

“We were only at the tail end of it. The flooding stopped at the field to one side of us but the people behind us were completely submerged. We were so, so lucky,” says Kelly-Anne.

From a business perspective, Steve and Kelly-Anne were grateful they were able to help in the aftermath. She recalls, “Most of our equipment was out on-site. Prior to the cyclone, our Pan Pac forest manager, Gerald Haynes, told us to get our machines to the front of the forest. He knew it was going to be mammoth.

“Pan Pac was amazing through it all … they were helicoptering our guys into the machines already in the forest, so they could work their way out. They would collect them again at the end of the day. That went on for about a week. The only thing we couldn’t retrieve was a fuel tank. We are so grateful and fortunate, as there were many people who couldn’t get to their machines.

“We put our FMNZ teams with Fulton Hogan to help open the council roads. It was a very eerie time … we would see our trucks going out and think, ‘Yes, they are going out to help.’”

The awards

Steve has been an avid competitor in regional and national excavator operator competitions, accumulating a row of certificates and trophies that are proudly displayed in the office. The ultimate was the coveted first prize in the nationals in 2017 and in 2018.

Steve and Kelly-Anne are now judges at the national competitions, with Kelly-Anne recently taking on the role of organising the regional competitions. Add to that, son Connor (28), who also competes, placing second in the regionals for the past two years.

Another award, sitting in pride of place, is from White Pine. “There was a major under slip at Wairoa,” explains Kelly-Anne. “They gave us three months to complete the job, and we completed it in three weeks. We double-crewed it to get the job done and ended up winning an award for it!”

Following in their footsteps

With a blended family of six children, Steve and Kelly-Anne are proud of the diverse career paths taken by five of them, with their 15-year-old yet to enter the workforce.

Two children have decided this industry is for them. “Connor is currently working at Sovereign, operating one of our machines. Our daughter, Baylee (24), started out with us in administration but always wanted to drive trucks. Ultimately, she wants to drive our trucks, but she needs some experience first … things can go so wrong so easily with tipping trucks. So, she took herself off and got a job with JJ Richards on a class 4 Greenwaste truck and has been with them for a year now,” Kelly-Anne says. Steve adds, “When she mentioned the rubbish trucks, I thought that’s quite a good place to start. She’s driving as well as operating something, which is great for her. “Our kids are doing a bit of everything, which I like … they don’t all need to follow in our footsteps.”

Steve and Kelly-Anne complement each other in business. “I’m the forgotten one in the business,” laughs Kelly-Anne. But it’s both of us that make it work … I can’t do what he does, and vice versa. And then we have the team to back us.”

“I don’t mind being here in the yard,” Steve comments, “but I don’t like the office!”

Sounds like the perfect partnership.