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By Jamie Swedberg
The foxholes arenīt the only evidence of inventiveness in this shop. In an adjoining room, separate from the squeaky-clean sewing area, the shopīs dustier, greasier operations take place.
Fourteen-foot-high garage doors allow "anything thatīs street-legal" to be driven in and fitted with a tarp. Here, too, awning frames are welded, products are developed, and boxes are shipped. In one corner, traumatized truck tarps are dragged in for repairs, facilitated by another clever invention—a long, skinny light table. "A lot of people do repairs on the floor," Sean says. "But Woody designed and fabricated this, which shows any and every hole in the tarp." For ease of use, thereīs a metal roller attached to the long side of the table.
"You just hook the tarp up to the roller, and roll the truck top as needed. Thereīs a little rotary switch in the back," Sean explains proudly.
It wasnīt always this way. Until 1998, the entirety of OīBrian Mfg. was confined to a 15,000-sq.-ft. space across town, crowded with tables, equipment, and people. But in November of that year, the firm opened its brand-new, custom-built facility off Highway 301 and turned the smaller building into a metal-fabrication shop for its automatic tarping system frames.
It turned out they made the change just in time for Hurricane Floyd, which immersed the metal-fab shop—but not the main facility—in seven feet of water. The storm KOīd many neighboring businesses, but it only inconvenienced OīBrian; it turns out the metal-fabrication equipment was surprisingly resilient.
"All our hydraulic suppliers were really, really helpful," Winnie says. "They told us to pull the plugs [on our hydraulic equipment], drain all the water out, and soak it in a bath of hydraulic fluid. It was recoverable." The welders received the same treatment, as did a waterlogged forklift.
The only major casualty was a plasma table (a piece of equipment that cuts steel by generating electrical arcs) that racked up a massive repair bill; yet even that had a silver lining. "The table hadnīt run that well up until that point, and now itīs never run better," Sean says, laughing.
Like father, like son
"I started working summers with dad when I was in school," remembers Woody OīBrian. "After I graduated, I moved to Durham and worked at an accounting firm for a couple of years. Then, at my motherīs persistence, I came back and started working at the company."
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