Digging into the Past

It was 1961. Gene Ward was doing what he normally did running the day-to-day operation of his rental yard and heavy equipment business. One day, the telephone company approached him. They were looking for something that might dig and lay cable at the same time. “I modified a sod cutting ma-chine, redesigned it with some different gearing and powered it with an 8HP Kohler engine,” Ward said. “It was a crude version of a line layer.” Several years later, Gene and his brother Jerry combined their collective engineering and business expertise. They took a basic idea and developed a breakthrough machine. It was called the L-1. the first self-contained cable line layer. In 1972, Line-Ward Corp. was born. “The L-l was 95 percent successful the first time Jerry test ran it,” Gene said. “We knew we had a terrific product right away. With the L-1, the Ward’s had a self-contained machine to bury cable for telephones and cable television, and pull plastic or porous piping for lawn sprinkling systems. The new L-l could cut to a depth of 13-inches. That was a vast improvement over the modified sod cutter. The new machine also vibrated less and required less maintenance. It was hand assembled and designed so attachments simply snapped on.