Back when my kids were still kids (3 boys) I decided that I needed to get involved in some recreational activity that the whole family could be involved in, and in particular something that my boys would develop an interest in.
It concerned me that the conversation of the day was “V8 this” & “WRX that” & “HSV something else” and that they were all developing along the same old adolescent road of fast car fever. They were growing up too fast & pretty soon they wouldn’t want to be doing what Dad was doing.
The idea of buying a 4WD came to me (not quite sure how) so out I went and bought a 60 series Landcruiser. One thing led to another & pretty soon I joined a local 4WD club that was very active in arranging the sort of weekend trips we were keen to go on.
We were keen to do trips that take you to places you wouldn’t normally see & certainly wouldn’t get to without a 4WD. It didn’t take too many trips to realise that my standard 60 series, loaded with gear for 5 (including 3 very excited boys) was occasionally going to need recovery from some situation or other. The only problem was that generally when recovery was needed it was almost always when the weather was bad & there was inevitably some mud around (usually under my car because that’s where I was stuck).
Where was my recovery gear? Under all the camping gear and luggage of course! Out comes all the luggage & camping gear & placed somewhere to try & avoid the mud (that didn’t happen). Out comes the recovery gear, a gentle tug from one of our club members & its all over. Pack it all back in again & were on our way again ( this time not packed quite so well & not quite as clean).
One of the blokes on the trip with us had made himself a set of drawers (what a great idea!) & had all his recovery gear at hand when ever he need it. OK, simple! That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to get a set of drawers fitted before the next trip.
Out I went the next week to the 4WD accessories outlet to get some drawers. There were a couple of options at the time and both were very good quality with good sturdy construction, I came away from the “4WD Accessory outlet without any drawers!
Not because they weren’t good enough, not because they didn’t suit or wouldn’t do the job but simply because I couldn’t justify the “price tag” for what I wanted them for.
I decided that I could make myself a set (I think a lot of us have thought that & many of us have done so) and as we already had a manufacturing facility it should be relatively easy.
To cut a long story short, the set that finally went into my car was a 6th generation model. The first model was OK but it was too heavy (at nearly 100 kg it never made it into any car). The second was a totally new design & much lighter, however one of my 4WD friends saw it & bought it from me before I could fit it into my car. No worries, I’ll just build another one, only this time I have a couple of improvements to make (nothing like seeing the design in the flesh to inspire new improvements) and so it went on until I had a product that I was very happy with.
Product development has been on going ever since with large changes in design, technologies and processes making it one of the best on the market!
I now have an 80 Series and 200 series that is on site at every Caravan Camping and 4WD show that we attend.
