The owners of 50 Australian businesses share their stories of true grit and determination, long hours and lonely nights, in a new book titled 50 Unsung Business Heroes.

Every story is inspiring and fascinating, including interviews with Garry and Cory Kennedy, of Bairnsdale’s Kennedy Trailers.

Based in Bairnsdale, Kennedy Trailers have been manufacturing customised truck trailers, skels and log jinkers for the past 20 years, now producing 150 units a year.

Founder, Garry Kennedy, was recently joined by two sons, Cory and Linden, in management of the business, after he suffered a heart scare.

Now employing 50 staff, the Kennedys are proud of their contribution to the local economy.

The business has come a long way since Garry started work on his own, from his parents’ yard. After leaving school, Garry did an apprenticeship as a boilermaker.

“Life was going along okay until 1980, when the business I was working for closed down. I needed to do something so I decided to have a go at mobile welding as my job,” Garry said.

He bought a used welder, an old Falcon, a grinder, a gas set and worked doing maintenance on machinery, mostly at the abattoir and a rendering plant in town.

“A smelly, dirty job but the money was clean,” he said.

“I gradually got into doing more bush machinery work, travelling up into the forest and working on contractors’ equipment. I was doing a lot of travelling, repairing machinery and then one day this fellow asked me to build a log jinker, and the business grew from there.”

Other stories in the book feature an ex-Croatian soldier who had to sell his son’s toys to pay for groceries, a teenager who slept rough on the streets, and now employs more than a hundred staff, and another who started from her kitchen table, and now runs 10 offices across six countries.

Small business is the backbone of the economy, and between them these 50 SMEs alone are responsible for 1000 employees.

With a combined turnover in excess of $400 million, they pay millions in taxes.

50 Unsung Business Heroes is a concept created by Charles Fairlie, who was unemployed himself when he took on the task of recording these stories.

Charles found the most inspiring stories were often the ones that didn’t make the front page, but rather the quiet achievers who didn’t see themselves as special.

Writing the book’s foreword, Kate Carnell, Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, said: “These stories are sure to inspire and empower potential business owners, those with great ideas, wanting to test the water – and others striving to build on what they have already created.”

PICTURED: Cory and Garry Kennedy, of Bairnsdale’s Kennedy Trailers. The Kennedys feature in the newly released book 50 Unsung Business Heroes, which shares the business success stories of people from a range of backgrounds.