Jobs
Without Prejudice
We did big jobs and small, we guaranteed we'd be there the next day, and we would. One Man, Jeff Bladen, a horse trainer/breeder gave us heaps of work and it was all the way past Mooroduc down the Mornington Peninsual, somewhere, but off we'd go heeding the call of cash. He was like a real point dexter type of a man but he had money and wanted everything just so. We put up Circular Pens for his Prize horses to run a round in, he gave us so much repeat business as did Gas and Fuel at Highett, and St Kilda Council and Flemington and Geelong trotting track and we'd stay overnight at some, a small school in Bendigo, just for the trip with the kids and we worked like dogs, hand filling our post holes with concrete not getting pre mix delivered.
And the weather was bitterly cold and they day we were supposed to be going out to sightsee we were too exhausted and cold and lay on the beds all day and went home. And we didn't get paid for that job for months. But others went like a dream, Bob did his back once and sent me out to Laverton with the truck, fully loaded and the 'boys", and it was just an Industrial Site in the middle of nowhere. but we flew through it and it was high, with lots of ladder work, 8' 3 barb in a giant square and two sets of gates to be hung. And Gardiner said that he thought Bob was watching us somehow, like a fly in the sky, he always managed to know what we were doing. he knew how long a job would take and if we weren't back in a certain amount of time there was trouble.
He knew to the tiniest detail of how much material we would need, as you can't be out on a job in the middle of nowhere and go back for anything. we had spare "Needles" for lacing the gates, buckets of bolts, loads of tools, special End Nippers that had to be ordered from the UK by Phillip Grigson at Adairs. Funny I met up with Phillip again at Maxi Trans, he supplied them too, in fact I knew a lot of Suppliers by the time I went to Maxi trans, my first Purchasing job. (All through DIF, Dandenong Industrial Fencing), we bought wire from BHP, who locked you into an exclusive sort of a deal and Bob ended up hating them and began to export wire from overseas so much cheaper but it was the 80's and the quality was rubbish, much to our dismay after waiting 3 months for the first shipment, the gal would not run properly through the chain mesh machine and the PVC coated mesh's plastic coating was cracking. Shit, absolute shit and we had been clicking our heels thinking we were getting a bargain, half price imported wire, we would clean up the market.
And we couldn't get the money back, we tried. And we began to grow amd grow and grow and the it was either double our output or stay the same and we had to go bigger, bigger jobs, more men, more material, more headaches but we did it, working like dogs and not getting any time with the kids.
To be continued
We did big jobs and small, we guaranteed we'd be there the next day, and we would. One Man, Jeff Bladen, a horse trainer/breeder gave us heaps of work and it was all the way past Mooroduc down the Mornington Peninsual, somewhere, but off we'd go heeding the call of cash. He was like a real point dexter type of a man but he had money and wanted everything just so. We put up Circular Pens for his Prize horses to run a round in, he gave us so much repeat business as did Gas and Fuel at Highett, and St Kilda Council and Flemington and Geelong trotting track and we'd stay overnight at some, a small school in Bendigo, just for the trip with the kids and we worked like dogs, hand filling our post holes with concrete not getting pre mix delivered.
And the weather was bitterly cold and they day we were supposed to be going out to sightsee we were too exhausted and cold and lay on the beds all day and went home. And we didn't get paid for that job for months. But others went like a dream, Bob did his back once and sent me out to Laverton with the truck, fully loaded and the 'boys", and it was just an Industrial Site in the middle of nowhere. but we flew through it and it was high, with lots of ladder work, 8' 3 barb in a giant square and two sets of gates to be hung. And Gardiner said that he thought Bob was watching us somehow, like a fly in the sky, he always managed to know what we were doing. he knew how long a job would take and if we weren't back in a certain amount of time there was trouble.
He knew to the tiniest detail of how much material we would need, as you can't be out on a job in the middle of nowhere and go back for anything. we had spare "Needles" for lacing the gates, buckets of bolts, loads of tools, special End Nippers that had to be ordered from the UK by Phillip Grigson at Adairs. Funny I met up with Phillip again at Maxi Trans, he supplied them too, in fact I knew a lot of Suppliers by the time I went to Maxi trans, my first Purchasing job. (All through DIF, Dandenong Industrial Fencing), we bought wire from BHP, who locked you into an exclusive sort of a deal and Bob ended up hating them and began to export wire from overseas so much cheaper but it was the 80's and the quality was rubbish, much to our dismay after waiting 3 months for the first shipment, the gal would not run properly through the chain mesh machine and the PVC coated mesh's plastic coating was cracking. Shit, absolute shit and we had been clicking our heels thinking we were getting a bargain, half price imported wire, we would clean up the market.
And we couldn't get the money back, we tried. And we began to grow amd grow and grow and the it was either double our output or stay the same and we had to go bigger, bigger jobs, more men, more material, more headaches but we did it, working like dogs and not getting any time with the kids.
To be continued
