Joseph Matthew is proof of what can be accomplished when a company invests in its staff.

He started off sweeping the floors of the Public Transportation Board offices in 1973 but expressed an interest in doing more.

The government agency supported him as he took courses here and abroad that allowed him to advance his career.

At 67 he is a senior technician with PTB and responsible for the “preventive maintenance” of Bermuda’s buses. On May 10 he will be honoured for the 50 years he has dedicated to the government as its longest serving employee.

“As they say, it's not what the company can do for you, it’s what you can do for the company to improve the work and facilities,” he said.

Mr Matthew was in his late teens when Bill Roberts hired him as a “general helper” in the PTB garage.

Now located on Palmetto Road in Devonshire, when he started it was housed on East Broadway in the former train station, roughly 150 feet away from the roundabout at Crow Lane.

On discovering the 17-year-old was interested in engines, Mr Roberts put him to work as an apprentice under Ellsworth Lowell.

“He was basically an engine builder. He used to be a teacher up at Stonington, but he was an engine builder at the bus garage back in the day. And he encouraged me to go up to the college for mechanical [training],” Mr Matthew said.

Malcolm Simons taught him about diesel engines at the Technical Institute in Prospect. Mr Matthew paid about $35 for the course.

Once he’d passed he was allowed to “do mechanical work” on his own and given a $20 raise – from $78 to $98 a week.

On turning 21, his pay went up again to $120. Through it all he focused on his education, and was trained as a welder under Curtis DeGraff.

Meanwhile, Mr Roberts continued to push him and sent Mr Matthew to Iowa in the United States to study transmissions for buses and then on to Barbados for another engine course, specifically related to the Leyland buses that Bermuda used.

It was around that time that Joseph “Bo” Smith became a mentor.

“He used to be the machinist for the garage and we did a lot of work together,” Mr Matthew said.

At the request of PTB the pair came up with a way for bus drivers to safely secure passengers’ fares.

“Back then the operators used to take around a bag, like a small suitcase, to store the money from the passengers,” he said.

“The buses that came, came [without] anything for the vaults to rest on. The government came up with this idea that the drivers needed somewhere to put their money and so we worked on designing a pole out of galvanised pipe using a half-inch pipe.”

The vault was then attached on top. Fitting the parts into buses is now standard practice for Mr Matthew.

“I still am the one that puts the vaults into the buses. I have to drill the poles. They come with no holes and so I have to measure it and drill it and fit the vaulting in.

I’m the one that does the majority of the work to mount the vault onto the pole.

“It's a lot of work drilling the holes into the poles and putting the vaults on. Hopefully, if God spares my life, somebody will end up doing it when I retire.”

In the 1980s Mark Fields joined the team and sent Mr Matthew off to Canada.

“I did some training there – welding, brakes for heavy equipment – basically for the buses, trucks and everything like that.”

Impressed with his skills, Mr Fields “took [Mr Matthew] off the floor” in 1995 and tasked him with “preventive maintenance” instead.

“Basically that's what I'm doing today,” he said. “If something happens to a bus, they basically send me to investigate the accident, to find out what happened to the vehicle; if it is mechanical damage. I’m the first point of investigation.”

The job hasn’t come without its problems. Mr Matthew says he has been “bullied” by people unhappy when their work is highlighted as the cause of a crash.

To alleviate the stress the cricketer, who last played for Willow Cuts in his mid-forties, took up martial arts and doubled down on his walks.

He is proud of his contributions. He has directed thousands of dollars towards charities through the pledges he has collected since the 1980s on behalf of the End-to-End and other events; he has also raised more than $20,000 for PALS.

In 2005, as Bermuda made the move to air-conditioned buses, Mr Matthew was encouraged by his boss Stanley Simmons to “go back up to Bermuda College”.

Mr Matthew insisted he was “too old”. Mr Simmons assured him that he was “never too old” to learn. Mr Matthew passed the course with merit.

In January he took the same attitude to England, where he learnt about the “performance, equipment and procedures” of electrical buses.

“I’m still learning. I never stopped learning; I’m always willing to learn. I think the walking and giving back to the community helps me.”

He’s grateful for all his “mentors” over the years – Mr Roberts, Mr Fields, Mr Simmons, Danny Moore, Ernest Johnstone, Kenneth Hunt, Robert Washington and Leon Stovell are on a long list of people who contributed to his development, Mr Matthew said.

“I love what I do. I enjoy doing mechanic work. I enjoy fabricating stuff. I enjoy just working and helping other mechanics if they need assistance.”

He’s hoping to stay on the job as long as he is allowed and is excited about the changes to come.

“Government just installed on the roof of the garage with solar panels. And they've done a lot of work here with the electrical system in the sense of running cables and putting up the generators and all the chargers for the buses. That's a big transaction for a lot of us that work here and I'm enjoying it. It's very, very important.”