WHEN CHRIS Allers joined Miller Weedon and Carruthers in 1942 as a junior office clerk earning the princely sum of £5 a month, his ambition was to become a manager one day like his boss whose monthly salary at the time was £35.
It's a dream which he achieved several times over during his long and eventful career in shipping which ends this month when he retires at the age of 76.
Educated at Gill College in Somerset West he left school with a standard 8 certificate - his parents could not afford to keep him at school any longer - and went to Port Elizabeth in search of a job.
On joining Miller Weedon he moved quickly up the corporate ladder, sometimes working through the night to ensure that
customs entries were
prepared on time.
When he opened an office for the company in East London in 1948 one of his perks included a company bicycle.
Well remembered for his time as managing director of Grindrod Forwarding in the 1970s, he retired from that company in 1989 and has since been involved in consultancy work and as managing director of Cross Globe Freight which was taken over by the Danish company CICCI SA in 1998.
Allers and his wife will emigrate to Ireland to be closer to their children.
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