DOING IT THE RIGHT WAY

Hayward Hydraulics Celebrates 30 Years

BY JACOB CASHA

Not every business starts with a blueprint.

For some, it begins as a calling… in more ways than one.

Burdekin local Robert Hayward had been in the hydraulics industry since he was 18. A diligent worker who loved his job, he quickly built a reputation locally as one of the best in the business.

But despite a mutual affinity with the industry that had formed over years, he stepped away in the early 1990s to help his father-in-law maintain a cane property in Clare.

Until he received a call.

Then another… and another.

Rob quickly realised that, despite his brief hiatus, his reputation in hydraulics had not faded.

With that, he was pulled back into the game, this time with nothing but a $2,000 ute, a toolbox, and work up to his neck.

And the only way to keep himself from drowning in it was, ironically, to go in deeper.

“As the Burdekin is, if you do a very good job, word travels quickly between the community. One farmer talked to another, he talked to another, he talked to another…

“Until I sat down with my wife one day and said, ‘I think we can make a business out of this.’”

His ute would eventually make way for a permanent space—a small sub-shed at Larry Hudson Engineering in the Ayr Industrial Estate that would serve as his headquarters for the following four years.

He tackled the first year solo, before demand forced him to put an apprentice on in the second year, and a qualified tradesman in the third.

By the end of the fourth, Rob’s work had outgrown its humble base, moving down the road into a new purpose-built shed that would become the home of Hayward Hydraulics.

That shed would officially open in 1996, spurring a 30-year legacy sustained by three defining pillars.

Growing with the industry

“I had no idea how to use computers,” Rob said with a smirk.

Admittedly, he hadn’t realised he signed himself up for a three-decade, three-fold evolution between an entire industry, his own business, and himself. What he did know was that he was ready to learn, and eager to grow.

It started with the basics. For Rob, that meant wrapping his head around modern computers, attending TAFE courses on emerging welding techniques, and becoming a leader.

“I went from being a very good tradesman to having to be an employer,” he said.

“You have to be a people's person, you have to treat people the right way, treat your workers the right way. That part I never even thought of until we started getting into it.”

Rob treated this evolution as a marathon rather than a sprint, dedicating the business's first decade cementing its reputation as a local leader. After striking up deals with major companies, including Queensland Rail and Wilmar Sugar in the mid-2000s, he decided to take the leap into the mining industry in the early 2010s as a safety net for the unpredictable sugar industry.

With that growth, Hayward Hydraulics’ shed would undergo its third structural expansion to accommodate its continuously increasing popularity and modernised technology.

He built a habit of gleaning ideas from various online hydraulic magazines, and then building on them to not only keep up with the industry, but to will it into the future himself.

“I eventually built a reputation for thinking outside of the square. If somebody's been doing something for 20 years, I'll look at a better way of doing it,” he said.

Albeit, he admits he and the business are still evolving today.

“I've seen harvesters and planters go from chain and sprocket to hydraulic motors, to hydraulic motors being linked to satellite GPS,” he said.

“The industry has changed in leaps and bounds, and you have to keep finding ways to move with it.”

‍