Popular courier makes farewell trip
Courier driver Emani Soane loves Golden Bay and the Bay loves him right back. Unfortunately Emani has not renewed his contract with Courier Post, so any of his friends in the Bay who missed him last Friday will have just one chance to say goodbye to him.
The cheery Nelsonian with the big smile officially finished at Courier Post last week, but he is making a special trip over here tomorrow (Saturday 28 February).
“The way it worked out last Friday, I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to everybody - like the people at Abbeyfield,” said Emani. “I couldn’t let that happen, so my wife and I are coming over this Saturday. We’ll be in the front meeting room at the Junction Hotel from midday in case anyone wants to come by and have a chat. It’ll give me a chance to say thank you to people too, I’ve really appreciated the friendly way I’ve been treated.”
Regular and one-off customers throughout the Bay were impressed by Emani’s ability to turn the seemingly straightforward task of parcel delivery into a kind of old-fashioned neighbour-to-neighbour visit.
“He’s incredibly efficient,” said Harcourts real estate agent Nikki Ryan, “But he’s got that lovely human touch too. You looked forward to him turning up.”
Galen King the creative director of Lucid Design said that his company only stuck with Courier Post because of the “fantastic service Emani offered, and his dedication to his customers.”
Mike Ponder is the Nelson region branch manager of Courier Post. He described Emani as “a fantastic ambassador for the company. We’ve had substantial growth in our market share in Golden Bay,” said Mike, “and I put a lot of that down to the quality of the service Emani has offered. He’s awesome and I’m sad to see him go.”
Emani said that he liked the work and he would have liked to carry on focussing on customer service the way he has for about six years. “You’ve got to look after your family, though, and, for us, we’ve got to make some different choices and get to live life a bit more. The finances became difficult with all the costs. When you’re a contractor you’ve got to pay your ACC, your GST and other taxes and your road user charges - as well as fuel and servicing. It’s a lot.”
Emani has owned his current van for less than six years and in that time it has travelled 633,000 kilometres. “The servicing was starting to get expensive,” he said, “But a new one was going to cost $44,000 and I didn’t want to go into too much debt.”
Emani says he never minded the drive over to Golden Bay because of spirit of the place. “It’s different over here,” he said. “There’s a special kind of generosity in people. The relief driver who came over with me last Friday couldn’t believe the number of people who wanted to come and say goodbye. The van Courier Post hired blew up and three or four people offered their vehicles to help out. Then Bickleys put the relief driver on their bus for free and took him home.”
The future will be very different for Emani and, while he says he’ll miss all the friendly waves from other drivers, his next job will still put him in touch with plenty of people.
“I’d like to get involved with youth mentoring with a programme like the Big Brother/Big Sister programme,” he said.
Neil Wilson
