Bruce Plested is the co-founder of Mainfreight and one of New Zealand's wealthiest people. He shares his philosophy on business, charity - and a little politics - as part of RNZ's new series, RICH: The meaning of wealth in Aotearoa.
What's one sign of a bad workplace culture? For 82-year-old billionaire Bruce Plested, it's dirty toilets. Because a grubby loo isn't just poor hygiene, it's also a sign staff, no matter their role or status, are not taking pride in their workplace.
Plested, the founder, largest shareholder and chairman of Mainfreight, puts great store in the state of his company's bathrooms. "Here, we clean the toilets in this big branch at lunch time so we're spick and span and you've got to have brushes and toilet paper and hooks to put your clothes on."
It reflects the high standards and team culture he expects of the company's near 11,000-strong global workforce.
"I'm a bit fanatical about toilets and cleanliness and so on. It's been a thing right through, but it's so important. It's kind of everything. You can pick any restaurant in Auckland or wherever you are - if the toilet's not up to scratch, [you] go somewhere else."
Plested has been running Mainfreight for 46 years and is hoping to do at least another four. That would take him to the company's 50th anniversary, after which he'll "get the hell out of the way".
In his long career at Mainfreight, he hasn't often been in the spotlight. But he sat down with RNZ at the company's sprawling Ōtāhuhu depot for a wide-ranging discussion about wealth, long-term thinking and "proving it can be done from New Zealand".
Mainfreight's Ōtāhuhu depot Photo: Supplied
High standards and big profits
In 1978, Bruce Plested was working as an accountant for an established transport company. He got frustrated with the way it operated, clashed with management and went off with his mate Howard Smith to start their own firm.
"When we started in the freight business, it was utterly terrible. The service was just terrible," Plested says.
Starting with a single Bedford truck, the goal was just to be the best. Money would follow - and it did.
Mainfreight has grown into a massive global logistics business that shifts freight around the world. In New Zealand, their blue trucks are a familiar sight on roads across the country.
With an annual revenue of over $4 billion, Mainfreight is currently valued on the NZX at over $7.5 billion. That's more than three times what Air New Zealand is worth.
It has made Plested a very wealthy man. The NBR's annual Rich List estimates his net worth at around $1.3 billion.
His drive for excellence at Mainfreight hasn't come without some bumps in the road. In 2021, a Waka Kotahi NZ Transport investigation found Mainfreight drivers on four routes felt pressure to falsify their logbooks and ditch their mandatory rest times in order to meet deadlines. At the time, Mainfreight's CEO Don Braid insisted privacy laws meant the issues were unknown to the company due to the fact most drivers were self-employed contractors. He implemented a number of new safeguards to better manage driver fatigue and distraction, and Waka Kotahi didn't take the matter further.
The publicity around the issue would have no doubt stung Plested and his long-serving CEO Braid, as they pride themselves on building a highly supportive team culture that is not focused on individual success. "I don't want to generalise too much, but we use the word 'we - we want.' American management tends to say 'I'."
Since the company's founding, staff have been given 10 percent of the company's annual profits. In 2022, the company gave $87 million in profits to its workers, Plested says.
"We take approximately 10 percent of each branch's profit if they've made at least 80 percent as much as they did the year before. That 10 percent is divided equally amongst the people in that branch. We don't view it as being generous exactly, we just view it as fair."
He says it's something Mainfreight shareholders have come to accept, realising the benefit it has to the overall success of the company. "We still have enough for them, you know? I mean, that's the key to it and we would have less if we were not paying it."
During a tour of the Ōtāhuhu depot, the closest thing Mainfreight has to an official headquarters, Plested demonstrates the team vibe by proudly pointing out that the tables in the lunchroom are joined as one. All staff, no matter what their status, eat together.
Decision making is also devolved to individual branches, hiring from within is encouraged and new workers, be they lawyers or accountants, are expected to spend time on the warehouse floor driving forklifts and learning the ropes. "Treat them as if they're going to stay with you for 40 years, so virtually everybody in the company starts on the floor. It doesn't matter if you've got a degree or whatever."
Wealth tax, politics and philanthropy
Plested credits much of his team-focused business philosophy to the fact he was raised by a solo Mum in the then-tough working class suburb of Grey Lynn, Auckland.
"I had 26 Māori living next door to me as a kid and I regarded it as the greatest advantage that I ever had. I learned the way Māori think and I certainly learned how to pronounce the language correctly and my desire is to help them because, you know, they were my best mates."
Plested has tended to shy away from the public spotlight, and while there's a few photos in his board room of him meeting politicians, he's tended to stay out of political debate.
At the 2014 election, he donated $100,000 to Te Pāti Māori and $45,000 to National - the parties were governing together at the time. In 2017, he again gave $100,000 to Te Pāti Māori but nothing to National.
Chairman and founder of Mainfreight, Bruce Plested. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
He does offer a view, when pushed, on the contentious topic of a wealth tax. It's an idea he thinks he could support. "I believe I do. The concern, I think, that the wealthy have, is that the government will squander it and so there's a certain resentment about paying more than you should. But yeah, I think if we had a good enough government, they could get away with it and it could become part of the deal."
Ensuring other Kiwis, particularly Māori and Pasifika students from low socio-economic suburbs, have the same opportunities he did is something Plested is passionate about.
For the last 30 years he has been a key sponsor of the Duffy 'Books in Homes' scheme as well as providing scholarships, and financially supporting an entire Ōtara primary school now named Mainfreight Baird Primary School.
"Beyond getting people educated I don't think there is another route to getting a better country. We have to be interested in education," he says.
Planting trees and looking after the environment is also something dear to Plested's heart. Two years ago he bought a huge block of land up for development on Waiheke Island for $72 million. He did so with the hope that the land can remain in its natural state, and perhaps one day even become a public reserve.
"For posterity, really. That's what I keep saying to my kids. It probably can't become a Cornwall Park with the distance that it is from Auckland, but if ever they put a bridge across or something like that then we would turn it into a Cornwall Park or something. In the meantime, we're just sitting on it and grazing it."
Plested's commitment to conservation has also extended to things like requiring all his large truck and rail depots across the world to recycle their rain water. However, he concedes they have a long way to go to lower their carbon footprint.
"Nearly 90% of our forklifts all over the world are now electric. We have a dozen electric vehicles and we assume that they have a future, but their weight is kind of a problem." He's talking about the heavy batteries electric trucks require. "But if we don't get into them, we're not going to learn."
Mainfreight's Ōtāhuhu depot Photo: Alistair Guthrie
Long-term, home-grown big business
Plested takes a very long-term view of his company. Now almost 50 years old, he says it's only half way to the goal he and his co-founder Howard Smith staked out over beers decades ago.
"We were having a philosophical discussion over a few beers about how do we make better decisions and we said: 'well, why don't we act as if we're going be here for 20 years?' And then Howard drunkenly said 'oh, why don't we make it 50 years?', and then he said, 'let's make it 100 years!' We've been going towards that ever since."
Such a long vision is especially helpful in times of recession, like now, he says.
"It makes us continue to grow even when things are down. We don't even think about giving up. You know, we have slowed our capital spend at the moment, but just a little bit. All we've done is deferred off till 2026."
For Plested, another big motivator has been trying to prove New Zealand can produce successful global companies. Mainfreight now has a footprint in 27 countries, including Australia and the USA.
"The driving force was to prove it can be done from New Zealand," he says.
"That's one of the reasons we don't go on the Aussie share market. We want it to be seen and acted upon as a New Zealand company and New Zealand companies can succeed. Instead of being 10 or 20-year wonders, and then they've gone."
* This story is part of a special RNZ series, RICH: The meaning of wealth in Aotearoa. Over several days, feature interviews by Corin Dann and Anusha Bradley with a diverse range of wealthy and powerful New Zealanders examine attitudes to wealth, ideas for making us a richer country and what to do with money when you have plenty of it.