John Thomas is the Managing Director of the Thomas Motor Company. He succeeded to the position of Managing Director after his father’s untimely death in May 1978. Martin Thomas, the founder of the Thomas Motor Company, Started off as an apprentice mechanic in a suburban area of Melbourne when he was only eighteen working as an assistant to Fred Luthans. Martin learnt all he knew about automechanics from him. He was a keen and enthusiastic learner and Luthans like people like that. He saw a lot of potential in Martin and once remarked to a fellow worker after Martin completed a job in record time, “That kid is going to be someone someday. By the age of twenty-one, Martin had become one of the fastest and most skilful mechanics that Luthans had taught.
Five years later, Martin opened up his own garage in Geelong, a city 70kms west of Melbourne. With his natural knack for automechanics, Martin’s small business prospered until it became the Thomas Motor Company we know today.
It had been taken for granted that John Thomas would one day succeed his father as Managing Director of the Company. Martin was conscious of this and he wanted John to have a solid background in automechanics. He thus sent John off to a technical school. He did not want John to be taking on a job which would be beyond his capacities and training when he took over the business.
The company’s office was based in downtown Geelong, but the workshop was situated some distance away on the outskirts of town. Working in the workshop where the six mechanics employed in the business. Steve Robbins, aged forty-five, the foreperson in charge of the workshop, was a veteran at the Thomas Motor Company. He had been Martin’s long time friend and had been with the company since the day it was formed. He was the most experienced and skilled worker there.
Robbins basically did some administrative work besides the usual tasks at the workshop. He was the one who sorted