What did Air Powered look like in the beginning?

“In the beginning, it was really bare bones. We didn’t have a lot. We didn’t have anything in fact.

The day after we finished work in our previous job, we got a call saying that the client wanted to do an installation program for compressed air.

We quoted it with our previous employer, and they didn’t want to take on the job. So, Tony and I decided that that’s where our partnership would get formed.

Had no money, really, borrowed my mums car.

We threw an oxy acetylene system in the boot, and off we went.

We worked on that job for about a month. But when we finished it, we got paid and that’s when we started to use that money to gain more equipment and starting to set ourselves up.

Our first vehicle, we bought an old econo van, about 1979 it was, and it was a flatbed thinking that the guys used to drive down the markets with, with fruit and veg on the back and that was the delivery vehicle and our transport.

So Tony, being a bit of a backyard mechanic, was able to rig up a chain block on the back with a swing arm on it. And we had a car jack with a block of wood underneath to keep it all kind of steady when we were lifting up things with it. And that was to become my company vehicle. And that’s what I drove for the first 12 or 18 months all around town. So, a young man on a date, it was a bit tricky, but other than that, we kind of got through the first 18 months and as we did that, we started to accumulate more equipment and begin to develop ourselves into a hire business.” – Murray Closter