Businesses like this keep many of Australia’s small towns alive. Evolving from a one-man regional operation into a local success story employing over fifty staff, Kennedy Trailers has become a multi-generational family dynasty, all born out of an insatiable curiosity and never-say-no work ethic.
When most of us sit down to watch TV, the only thought generally going through our minds is ‘where’s the remote?’, and that’s okay because being entertained is the goal.
When Cory Kennedy sits down in front of his television set, entertainment is the furthest thing from his mind. As he says, “I’ll sit there and think, ‘yes it’s a TV, but it’s a rear projection TV – I wonder how that works? I wonder where the projector actually is’. I’m constantly looking past what it actually is.”
That desire to inquire further was inherited from his father, Garry, who admits to having had an innovative way of playing with toys. “Mum always told the story of how she would buy me a truck from the toy store and by the time I was home I had the back pulled off and was trying to work out how I could put a log trailer on it,” he recalls.
For Garry back then “the hardest part was that I couldn’t weld. I was only six, so I would use bits of wood and pins to make the log trailer.”
Cory’s grandfather – Garry’s father – drove a logging truck and that fascinated him; some of his best memories are of being in the truck with his Dad and working in the shed with him, making something to fit somewhere.
Garry never set out to own a business. It was never a dream to turn his passion for dismantling toy trucks into a revenue stream. He was quite content to be paid for putting in an honest day’s work.