Meet a Hardox fan

Hardox on bare skin

Zeb was named after Zeb Macahan, the friendly, helpful frontiersman from the US cult series How the West Was Won. But his name isn’t the only thing shared with the TV character.

Zeb is a man who has always gone his own way. Despite his young age, he has already run two companies.

“I run a contracting company with my partner. We hire out drivers for various types of machines — excavators, wheel loaders, backhoes, and much more — and I’ve been working with this for four years.”

The company also has a road grader that Zeb drives himself. Things are going well for the company, Team Haugskott AB. In just six months, it has expanded from two to seven people, including three women.

“The assignments come from all over Sweden. Intermittently there have been many mining assignments and right now we have an entire job just cable plowing.”

They work a seven-day shift. “I’ll work at another location for seven days, then I work at home in Östersund for seven days. I’m never off work,” he said, after just having come back from a job in Sälen where he was paving roads.

“I live Hardox”

Zeb has made himself known in the industry in a rather special way. You don’t have to look hard to notice the big red tattoo adorning the entire inside of his forearm. The Hardox logo is as clear there as it is on the excavator next to him.

“Look!” he said, holding up his arm proudly next to the Hardox logo on the machine. “Check out how similar they are.”

The resemblance is striking, and the question hangs in the air. Why did you get a Hardox tattoo?

“I live with a Hardox wear plate every day. I’ve worked with agricultural machinery, plows and a number of other machines. Hardox is everywhere. I come into contact with it every day and it has become a special metaphor to me. So to me, Hardox means that I am an exceptionally strong and durable person. It’s the tavern version after all,” laughed Zeb, who doesn’t take it too seriously.

“I live with a Hardox wear plate every day. I’ve worked with agricultural machinery, plows and a number of other machines. Hardox is everywhere. I come into contact with it every day and it has become a special metaphor to me. So to me, Hardox means that I am an exceptionally strong and durable person. It’s the tavern version after all,” laughed Zeb, who doesn’t take it too seriously.

“I think the Hardox logo is distinctive, it stands out. And I think it’s quite funny when I get to a building site, it’s time for lunch and people look curious, but nobody dares to ask. Sometimes somebody comes up to me and asks if that was me in Trucking magazine, and it was. It was a story from the mine, and they saw my tattoo and so I ended up in the magazine.

Driving a road grader in the summer and plowing in the winter cause a lot of wear.

““You need a steel that can be trusted. Every minute you can keep going before you have to replace the steel is valuable,” said Zeb. We couldn’t agree more.

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