Living to the grand old age of 96, he was an entrepreneur, an engineer, a pilot with skills that included flying light aircraft, gliders and even a microlite that he assembled himself
We’re talking about Lou Ozich, a well-known West Auckland earthmoving and roading contractor, who carried out work on most of Neil Housing’s subdivisions in the 1960s and 70s. He even subdivided his own land, the subsequently named Ozich Avenue.
Lou was a larger-than-life character, who his son Michael (Mike) and daughter Rosemarie jokingly described as “a combination of the characters out of a Barry Crump novel.”
Lou was born and raised in New Zealand to immigrant parents who came from the region of Dalmatia, Croatia in search of a better life. In his younger years he worked with his father at their family vineyard (Sunrise Vineyards) on Great North Road, Henderson.
Although he enjoyed working outdoors, Lou found work in the vineyard to be too monotonous, and what was worse was the fact that too little of the work involved pulling levers and shifting gears. You see, Lou had developed a love of machinery.
Small beginnings
It didn’t take him long to pluck up the courage to inform his very strict father that he intended leaving the family business and strike out on his own in the earthmoving game.
Being of Dalmatian (Croatian) heritage, Lou, whose real name was ‘Luka’, had been brought up to work hard and save his pennies, so once he’d had the notion of starting out on his own, it wasn’t too much of a stretch for him to purchase what his kids think might have been a Caterpillar D2 bulldozer and a 1940s K3 Austin truck and get underway.
Back in the 1950s and 60s when the Henderson area wasn’t the sprawling metropolis it is today, the local winemakers were held in high regard by the community, and Lou’s father Mirko was no exception.
Word-of-mouth was the best form of advertising back in the day, and though it’s not been documented, word wouldn’t have taken long to get around that Lou Ozich had just bought a truck and bulldozer.
While we know having even the best bit of kit isn’t a blind bit of use unless you know how to use it, the locals would’ve seen Lou using machinery at his dad’s vineyard and would have seen him fixing it when it broke down. These would’ve been two qualities worthy of at least giving young Lou and his machine a try.
Bigger fish
Initially, Lou’s jobs would have been of a smaller nature, cutting tracks on farms, vineyards etc., but Lou had his eye on a much bigger picture.
Lou’s wife May’s family, the Devcich’s, owned and operated an orchard on Great North Road near Waikumete Cemetery. The orchard which was situated at the top of the Waikumete Hill that now intersects Great North and View Roads.
Turning it up a notch
By the time the 1960s came around, urban sprawl was gearing up and the popularity of housing subdivisions was making the land far more valuable than any produce that could be derived from it, so Lou’s parents-in-law made the decision to turn their orchard into a housing development. Lou could see a lot of potential work for his business, so a rapid upscaling of the size of the machines he operated was looked upon as a necessity.
Lou had had a good run with his Caterpillar machine. He’d also become proficient with servicing and repairing the brand, so it wasn’t any surprise to anyone that a Caterpillar D6 was the first machine on his wishlist when the time came for upsizing his fleet.
Unfortunately, because neither of Lou’s children joined him in the earthmoving business, exact details of the business decisions he made must be left to conjecture while endeavouring to tell his story as faithfully as humanly possible.
Both Mike and Rosemarie say that Lou wasn’t the kind of guy to sit the family down at dinnertime and explain his business strategies, he simply had ideas and got down to the business of making it happen – but more about that later.
WABCO motor scrapers
I’m sure that those of us who have machinery coursing through our veins would dearly love to know his strategy behind the move from Caterpillar to WABCO when he upscaled even further to motor scrapers.
What we do know is that WABCO motor scrapers were considered to be the premium brand of the day. Developed by Robert G LeTourneau, a contractor/engineer on the Hoover Dam project in Nevada in the 1920s, who in 1953 sold his entire earthmoving line to Westinghouse Air and Brake Company (WABCO).
The Detroit-powered WABCO 111A was a unique piece of equipment, relying on electric motors to control its functions including its steering. The operator rested their hands on a horizontal bar and steered the machine with two joysticks about the size of a human thumb.
Given that machines were capable of speeds of up to 60km/h they could easily get out of control, which caused them to be dubbed ‘widow makers’.
Before the commercially produced WABCO 101F was produced with conventional power steering, it’s been reported that one Lou Ozich of New Zealand decided to convert his own electrically steered machine to hydraulic power steering much to the astonishment of the New Zealand WABCO dealership who came to see the conversion in action.
Writer’s note: However, it must be borne in mind that this feat of engineering was performed back in the days prior to the regulatory nightmare we’ve become accustomed to in the 21st century.
Nevertheless, Lou’s standard of perfection stood the test of time and lasted well past the time he retired at the age of 59. At the time of his retirement, he was operating two WABCO motor scrapers, a Caterpillar D6 and associated attachments.
Lou Ozich lived to enjoy an impressive 37 years of retirement until his death at the grand age of 96 years and four months in 2024.
His legacy lives on
More of Lou’s seemingly endless talents were revealed just one month ago while emptying his belongings from the house he built on his parents-in-law’s previously mentioned subdivision.
While moving a wardrobe and a chest of drawers from his house, the movers discovered a notation on the bottom of one of the cabinets, which read ‘Made by Luka Ozich 1953’.
Proof positive of a life well lived – Lou (Luka) Ozich, 1928-2024.
Images supplied