COVER FEATURE - DECEMBER 2008
DIVINELY DRIVEN
Rob Hilarides Has Always Followed His Beliefs
By Daniel J. Linss - Editor
Rob Hilarides has always been a man of faith. Throughout his life, he has gone where he has felt that he was led. Whether in business or his personal life, he has always followed God’s calling. And so far, God has not let him down. Rob (53) owns and operates a very large and successful dairy in Lindsay, California. He also has a couple of farms (to grow their feed) and a heifer ranch in Northern California, as well as a fleet of 12 trucks that do nothing but service the dairy, one of which is the neat 1957 Kenworth 925 featured on our cover/centerfold this month and on these pages. Rob is very grateful for the material blessings he has been given, and has always been a good steward of those blessings.
Rob’s grandfather (Bob) worked on dairies in Holland and then came to the United States in 1930 and started his own. Bob had dairies in Long Beach, Paramount, Artesia, Norwalk and then Cerritos. Rob’s father (Frank) took over the dairy in Cerritos before moving out to Ontario in 1980 with the rest of the dairy farmers. Today, the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, as well as a shopping center and Mimi’s Café restaurant, now sit on the land that was once Rob’s family dairy. Back then, the area was actually called Dairy Valley. Today, that region is now known as the cities of Artesia, Cerritos, Bellflower, Norwalk and a few others.
Although Rob grew up on a dairy, he was more interested in trucking than dairy farming. When Rob was still a teenager, he convinced his father that money could be saved if they transported their milk to the creameries in their own trucks. It worked so well, Rob was soon contracting to haul milk for other dairies in the area, filling in his time with produce loads when in season. In the summer of 1975, Rob got a tomato haul and needed to get another truck to handle it. Shortly thereafter, he found and purchased the old 1957 Kenworth 925 from Dan Boone Trucking in Paramount, California. The truck, which had been purchased new in 1957 by Consumer’s Oil out of Pomona, California, was originally a truck and trailer that hauled gasoline. Dan Boone bought the truck from Consumer’s Oil when it was only two years old, put a fifth wheel on it and then used it for many years to haul lumber on a flatbed.
When Rob first got the truck in 1975, it was painted green and white. Rob had seen a picture in an old copy of Overdrive magazine featuring an International truck, parked out in a cornfield, painted red and white. This was the inspiration for the Kenworth’s red and white paint scheme. Around that same time, Rob married Jeannie, his wife for the last 33 years, and while the two were on their honeymoon, the Kenworth got its first red and white paint job. Not long after that, Rob replaced the original Kenworth headlights with Peterbilt 359 double rounds and did a few other small cosmetic modifications.
The real beauty of this Kenworth is that Rob only paid $4,000 for it. “If the rig could hold up for three or four months, I knew I could park it after the season and still be ahead on my original investment,” said Rob. The truck not only lasted for those first few months, but it kept going strong throughout the entire season – but, unfortunately, not for long.
Shortly after that first season, Rob was on the Pomona Freeway in Los Angeles when the truck’s 262 Cummins engine literally blew up and disintegrated, leaving a trail of oil and engine parts scattered behind him on the roadway. Rob replaced the motor with an NTO300 Cummins (which was a “turned up” 262). After he wore that motor out, Rob replaced it with a 335 Cummins that was never quite right, and then ten years ago he replaced that one with a 270 Cummins – which is still going strong today. “It doesn’t have a lot of power but it goes real good across the flat ground,” says Rob. The truck’s transmissions are still original – 5+3 with overdrive in both boxes – as well as the high-ratio rear-ends that were made to run (he can still get this old rig up to 90 mph if he wants or needs to).
Before purchasing the KW, Rob had owned a couple International cabovers and small dump trucks, but the Kenworth was his first “real” truck. In its early days, he worked it very hard, hauling all sorts of things like milk, molasses, cattle, farming equipment, liquid fertilizer, feed, rock, sand and granite. This truck has never been a “show truck” – it has always been a working truck (it just worked a lot harder in its younger days). In 1979, Rob decided that the old rig had earned a full restoration. He had it stripped down to the frame and rebuilt from the ground up, giving it a new interior, as well. “It took about five months to restore it, and I have to say, it cost me more than what I paid for the entire truck. But I’ve never had any regrets about spending the money,” Rob said.
Not long after this restoration was completed, in 1980, the sale of Rob’s family dairy in Cerritos was finally complete. But instead of moving to Ontario with the rest of his family, Rob moved out of Southern California altogether, feeling “led” to make a new start in Tulare, a small farming community in Central California. At that time he was running five trucks, but trucking was not doing very well, so he sold three of them, keeping one that had a steady haul down south and parking the old Kenworth. The following year they sold that last truck, too, keeping just the Kenworth.
Late in 1980, Rob and his wife began raising heifers on their 20-acre plot for dairy farmers down south. A heifer is a young female cow before she has had her first calf. Many dairy farmers do not have the space on their land to raise these young cows for two years until they can be milked, so they have someone else raise them until they can be returned to the dairy. This was Rob’s new business, and it grew rapidly. He took the KW out of its short retirement and began using it to haul the cows and their feed. In 1983, Rob’s grandfather bought a 200-acre parcel and then leased it to his grandson. Rob built a new heifer ranch on the property and, over the next 10 years, leased it from his grandfather until he died. At that time, he purchased the land from his grandmother. He then started buying up all the surrounding pieces of land and increased his ranch to 1,500 acres, raising some 6,000 heifers at a time. By then, he was not only raising other people’s heifers, but he was buying and selling some of his own as well.
In 1996 Rob rented a dairy down the street and started milking cows. A couple years later, they rented a second dairy in Visalia, and then another one in Tulare. It didn’t take long for Rob to get all three of these dairies running at full capacity. At this point, Rob and Jeannie started thinking about building their own dairy and consolidating the three into one location. Around 2000, Rob was given the opportunity to buy a large piece of land from the city of Lindsay. The land had been the site of the Lindsay Olive Growers brine ponds – all of the process water from their nearby olive cannery was pumped to this site to be evaporated in ponds. The co-op went broke in the early 1990s and just left the land to the city. It was a big mess and much of the land (and its water) was polluted with salt, which caused many environmental issues. But Rob convinced the city that he could clean it up so they sold it to him. It was a long and drawn out three-year process, but in the end it all worked out – God got them through it. They finally began milking cows on this new dairy in May of 2003.
Today, Hilarides Dairy encompasses some 3,000 acres of land used for farming (growing feed), orchards, the cows and the dairy itself, which milks 9,000 cows twice a day on two rotary milkers. Each revolving milker, which looks like a huge merry-go-round, holds 80 cows and takes about six minutes to go around. The cows like to be milked, so they willingly walk into stalls on the slow-moving machine and then “take a ride” around. A worker attaches vacuum lines to the cow’s udders, which automatically drop off when the milk stops flowing. Once the ride is over, the cows back out of their stalls and leave, and then others take their place on the carousel. It is a fascinating process that the cows really seem to enjoy. Sometimes a bull will sneak in and get on the carousel just to take a ride!
In addition to the high-tech milking machines, the dairy also puts their milk through a condensing process before delivering it. This process filters out the water from the milk, thus removing 2/3 of the liquid. They are one of the only dairies in the state currently doing this, which saves the cheese plant (where all of their milk is delivered) from having to do it. It also reduces the amount of loads that Rob has to run every day from seven to just three, saving a significant amount of resources. The dairy also has its own power generation system. By covering their large waste lagoon behind the dairy with plastic, they have been able to trap and capture the rising methane fumes (natural gas). These fumes are then piped up to six large Caterpillar G342 generators that run 24/7 and power the entire operation. It truly is amazing – and very simple. And in a few months, Rob will be taking delivery of three Peterbilt glider kits which he plans on setting up with motors that run on natural gas – the same gas that his generators run on, only it will be purified and compressed for better combustion.
About five years ago, in 2003, the Kenworth went through its most recent restoration. Rob figured he’d clean the KW up one more time and then semi-retire it. The truck, which has a 235-inch wheelbase, got yet another red and white paint job, a Peterbilt Low Air Leaf suspension, a new stainless steel deck plate, rear light bar and quarter fenders. Rob also sleeved the original aluminum frame with steel for more strength and went back to the original tube-type wheels. He also made sure everything was nice and tight by replacing a few rivets, did some rewiring, replaced the stack, added a roof-mounted air conditioning unit and a new radio, and redid the interior once again. If you can believe it, the butterfly hood, the entire cab and one of the front fenders are still original. At this time, Rob also refurbished the 35-foot trailer – a 1978 Citation tanker that had been wrecked. This trailer, which was polished and painted to match the tractor, was built just for show (it has never hauled a load in it since being rebuilt).
Aside from a few close calls involving failed brakes and the loss of steering twice, the Kenworth has treated Rob very well over the 33 years he has owned it. Although it has undergone two full restorations, it really hasn’t changed that much since he got it in 1975. When asked how many miles the truck has on it, Rob’s short answer was, “I have no idea – a lot, I’m sure.” The Kenworth is just one of twelve trucks in the Hilarides Transportation Company’s current fleet – which only hauls their own products and feed. Six of these trucks are Peterbilts, five are Kenworths, and then there is one old White-Freightliner cabover. Rob also runs the Sierra Cattle Company, which controls their off-site farming operations and heifer ranch, and Three Sisters Farmstead Cheese, a specialty cheese-making operation that he manages with his daughters at the dairy. Their artisan-style cheese has won several awards and been featured in many popular magazines.
The whole family is involved in all of the businesses Rob owns and operates. Rob and his wife Jeannie have three daughters, Marisa, Lindsay and Hannah, one son-in-law (Anthony Simoes) who is married to Marisa, and one grandson Caine, who is two years old. Caine loves to hang out with his grandpa and take trips in the truck. Anthony helps out with the trucks, while Marisa and Lindsay do much of the work in the cheese factory. The sisters even give guided tours of the dairy and then let people sample the cheese after the tour, which is quite tasty. They even have a gift shop at the dairy filled with California cheese, wine, and everything you need to enjoy them.
When Rob is not working, he enjoys collecting and restoring Packard automobiles. He presently has about six of them that are nice, and a few other projects that are still in the works. His oldest one dates back to 1922, while the newest is a 1956. To commemorate his affection for these old Packards, Rob mounted a chrome Cormorant (bird), as seen in some of the automaker’s logos, atop the “KW” logo on the front of the Kenworth.
Although it is now semi-retired, Rob still uses the old KW to personally run loads between the dairy and their feed ranch near Sacramento once a week. Since the dairy is running at its max, it can’t expand any more. Rob does not have any future plans except to “follow where the Lord leads” like he always has. Proverbs 3, his favorite Bible verse, says it best: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Rob’s secret to success is his faith. But since there is either a cross or a Bible verse on most of his trucks, on all of the signs at his dairy, and even on the labels stuck to his cheese wheels, it really isn’t a secret at all, is it.