As long as Rhonda Daniels can remember, her father, Kenneth Daniels, has been working hard, making a living for his family by driving a water truck.

“I remember being little and when my dad would come home with the truck, my sisters and I would run to the end of the road and jump on the sides of the truck. My dad would drive with us hanging on the truck up the lane,” she reminisces.

She also remembers the constant interruption by customers in need of water delivery: “The telephone used to ring all the time.”

Today, she works double-duty, managing the business her father worked diligently to create, while handling her regular job as the Education Officer for the Department of Consumer Affairs.

Rhonda is the oldest of the Daniels children. Her sister, Roma, managed the business for her father for 15 years, from the time her oldest son was born, to just prior to her passing in 2000. Siblings Roxann and Kyle support the family business, although they do not actually work in it.

“I became involved in 1997,” Ms Daniels says, laughing. “I was primarily the manual labourer, making and delivering ice. I was thrown in the deep end when my sister passed.”

Suddenly, Rhonda found herself handling things like payroll and taxes, all the things her employers had always handled for her before.

“I wasn’t confident about doing it at first, because I had a full-time job with Government,” she says of those early days when she wondered how she would juggle the two jobs. “Thank God Caffee came along.”

Caffee Seymour functions as the business’s receptionist, handling the day-to-day running of the office, making sales and answering phone calls.

“Although it is a small business, it is a very busy business,” Ms Daniels says.

Managing a small business requires a great deal of hard work and organisation.

“Small business is the backbone of the community,” Ms Daniels adds. “You have to work that much harder to ensure that you meet your customer’s needs.”

She is very excited to see an ever increasing number of young men joining the ranks in the local water trucking industry. “It is a lucrative business, but it is a lot of hard work.”

Ms Daniels is also delighted to have the opportunity to be involved in the family business and to get to know her father in a new way.

“Even though it is kind of stressful running a family business, I have a lot of respect for my dad, because he has always had his own business and worked really hard.”

Mr. Daniels’ dedication to his business and family have continued to this day and, at the age of 73, he is only just starting to pull away from the regular handling of the business, leaving much of it in the capable hands of Rhonda, and passing the torch of the water trucking business to his nephew, Donald Daniels.

The change of hands has been going slowly, though, for the benefit of customers.

“We want people to know that they are still going to get the same service,” Ms Daniels adds.

Ultimately, the success of K.C. Daniels Ltd. has been fully dependant on their customers.

“We have a lot of loyal customers,” Ms Daniel acknowledges. She adds that it is her father’s “old-school” approach to business that has made him so popular, meeting customers where they are at and assisting them however he can. The return has been tremendous.

“One customer even drops off papayas because he knows how much dad likes them,” Ms Daniels remarks.

To honour their customers, K.C. Daniels is planning on holding a thank you cocktail party in the near future.