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Preston Usher (left), Al Usher and Dave Herrman are the owners of Ginder Hydraulic, L.C., which has been at 1218 N. Ninth s?nce1946. Sana J°Umal»Diversification has been a hallmark of the business at 1218 N. NinthBy DAVID CLOUSTONThe Satina JournalSalinan Ray Ginder was a businessman — he also was a tinkerer and a veritable problem-solver when it came to improving devices for either work or play.Ginder created and patented a hydraulic post-hole tamper. An avid bowler, he also created an adjustable thumb-hole device for bowling balls and a launcher for blue-rock trapshootingtargets.He was quite a guy. He was pretty inventive. He's one ofthese guys who could look down the road a J M USHERways and understand where things were going,” Jim Usher recalled.Usher was 14 when he started working after school for Ginder, whoin 1946 opened Ginder Hydraulic and Machine at 1218 N. Ninth. Ginder ran the business until 1965, when he sold it to Usher and his brother Larry, who grew up right across the street from the business.The Ushers ran the business together until 1990, when Alan Usher, Larry's son, joined the partnership, and the name was changed to Ginder Hydraulic, L.C. It also was in 1990 that Dave Herrman came to work for the company as the parts manager, Herrman had 20 years of experience as a parts manager for a Ford car, truck and tractor dealership. Preston Usher, Jim's son, started working in the shop in 1996 after graduating from South High School.Ray Ginder died in 1997; in January, Larry, 70, and Jim Usher, 62, officially retired from the business and turned the business over to Prelocal!NEWSston Usher, Al Usher and Herrman.He was kind of a hard guy to work for. But he did real well for us,” said Larry Usher, who light-heartedly described himself as a silent partner” the past nine years. During much of that time, he and his wife have traveled the nation as part of a group doing remodeling and repair work at churches.“We worked on about anything that was hydraulic. We worked on jacks, farm equipment. Mostly repair work,” he said. “We helped a lot of farmers set up special applications.”Diversification always has been a key to the business' success. Ginder Hydraulic stocks hoses and fittings for oil, air conditioning and water. Recently, they bought equipment and tooling to make steel hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders.The business installs hoists, power takeoffs, and snowplow and lift-gate equipment on trucks. It also carries a selection of pumps, valves, motors, gauges and filters for hydraulic systems, as well as filters, regulators and lubricators for air systems.They also can rebuild hydrostat pumps and motors and test them.Ginder Hydraulic customers come from as far east and south as Emporia and Winfield, as far west as Goodland, and as far north as southeast Nebraska. Customers include farmers, construction companies, federal, state and county government agencies, railroads, well-drilling companies and other repair shops.I'm mechanically minded. Larry was, too,” Jim Usher said. We enjoyed working on things that other people didn’t want to work on or didn’t know how to work on.See GINDER, Page D2
Newspaper Details
Salina Journal
Salina, Kansas, US
Sun, Mar 09, 2003
Page 56
Full Page
Clipped by
Salina P.
KS, USA 03 May 2022
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