Haynes Distributing going strong through generations

By Elizabeth Rogers

(Note: This was originally published by The Lincoln Times-News in 2014 under my maiden name, Heffner)

On a northern Lincoln County farm off Maiden Highway, Harbin Haynes began a business endeavor that continues to thrive a century later.

   “He started his own business— horse and wagon – in 1914,” grandson and Paul’s Distributing Company manager Paul Haynes said. “He milked his cows and carried his cans of cream, and his neighboring friends that farmed – he hauled their cans of cream also to Russel Blanton Creamery in Lincolnton, better known as the old Covle Dairy.

According to Haynes, in 1926, his grandfather expanded his business by bottling the milk on the farm and delivering it from house to house. He expanded again in 1932, this time adding ice cream to his inventory.

 “He had a dairy bar where the Chamber of Commerce building is now, which my aunt, Margaret Haynes, ran,” Haynes said. “He also had an ice cream parlor out on the dairy farm where people could come on weekends and get nickel cones of ice cream.”

 After his grandfather retired in the mid-1940s, Hayne’s father, Paul E. Haynes, took the operation over, processing the milk and ice cream until 1955. At that time, Haynes’s father elected to shut down the processing plant and become a distributor of dairy products.

“The cost of running a processing plant became very expensive, and there were a lot of state and local regulations,” Haynes explained. “He just felt like he could continue on and be a distributor, and it would be an easier way of life.”

Now, as a distributor, the family no longer had to milk the cows or process their milk. To this day, the farm’s cows are currently used as beef cattle.

Women also played an important role on the Haynes Dairy Farm. Upon the retirement of his grandmother, Haynes’s mother took over the laboratory testing of the milk and made butter as well as cottage cheese. In later years, she transitioned into a bookkeeper role. After his mother’s passing, Haynes’s wife, Cecilia, filled in as bookkeeper and secretary.

When his father went into service in World War II, Haynes’s Aunt Margaret took over his dairy route.

“She’s known for being Lincolnton’s very first female milkman,” Haynes said.

Haynes’s father was also eager to continue the tradition by teaching his children the family business. At the tender age of five, Haynes was introduced to the family tradition.

“After kindergarten, I would come in and pull empty crates to our employee who would wash the bottles,” Haynes recalled. “We had this big bottle washer, and this guy would put the bottles into this huge machine that would sterilize and wash them. There were empty crates there, and I couldn’t drag more than three at a time, but I’d bring them over to him and he’d put the clean bottles into the crate so a roller system could put the processed milk in.”

While Haynes was introduced to the family business at a young age, he had no intention of ever running the company. After graduating from high school, he attended Appalachian State University. During his sophomore year, he married his high school sweetheart, Cecilia, and upon graduation, began his career in teaching.

“I was a math teacher in western Lincoln County and a coach,” Haynes said. “I planned to work as a teacher and a coach for a career. Lincolnton has always been my home and where my heart is.”

In 1971, however, tragedy struck the family, causing Haynes to reconsider his current career path.

“My father died on his milk route in Gastonia,” he said. “At that time, I took the operation over as a manager. The reason that I left my teaching job is that my mother and my uncle, Albert Haynes, were involved in the business. I didn’t want to disrupt their occupations. I knew the time and patience (my father) had put into this, and I didn’t want to see the business end.”

Currently, both of Haynes’s sons contribute to the business.

“Cane is an active partner of the business, and Richard, who is the Lincoln Recreation Director, is a silent partner,” Haynes said. “As you can see, this is a family business. It always has been and always will be.”

Today, the company exclusively distributes Pet and Mayfield ice cream. According to Haynes, the business stopped selling milk in 1986.

“Now, we distribute to about 300 customers in Lincoln, Gaston and Cleveland counties,” he said. “Our biggest day is on Wednesday, when we receive a tractor-trailer load of ice cream. We start that process at 3:30 am, and usually by 6 or 6:30 am, our trucks are ready to go routes on their designated routes that they run. It’s early work. Most of these ice cream routes have anywhere from 15 – 25 stops a day."

While working in the industry can be challenging at times, Haynes believes the benefits far outweigh the challenges.

“In some cases, we have worked with three generations of the same family,” he said. “It’s rewarding to work with customers and friends we’ve had over the past 100 years.”

A grandfather of four, Haynes hopes his grandchildren will become active within the business within the next few years.

“If one of my grandchildren were to become active, it would become a fifth-generation business, which is quite rare these days,” he said.

With a century of work and perseverance under their belt, Haynes and his family believe the distribution center will continue to have a bright future.

“This is an old-fashioned story of a family that is not yet gone with the wind,” Haynes said. “We’re surviving and still doing what we did 100 years ago,”