When he finished high school he shepherded for two years before studying at Massey University to become a wool classer.
He worked for Tuckers Wool Scourers for two years, often classing at the big stations with a 5am start "and the wool wouldn't stop coming to you all day".
His OE was two years in the United Kingdom, working on a 1000-cow dairy farm that grew 800ha of barley, oats and wheat.
A call from his father saw him return and work in the family business but he struck out on his own two years later, becoming one of the first people to plant vines in Bridge Pa thanks to a Rural Bank loan at 23 per cent interest.
Like many others he lost his land.
"You can't survive that kind of interest rate - it is ridiculous."
He kept farming using leased land for market gardening and process crops for Wattie's. He says the strain of stacking tomato crates contributed to recent back surgery.
He delivered fresh produce from Hastings two or three times a week - 18-hour round trips to the markets in Rotorua, Tauranga, Hamilton and Auckland.
"We are not talking about 500-horsepower trucks that we have today. I started off with a 143-horsepower Bedford towing a trailer with a 20-tonne payload.
"From that I got lured into the transport side of things - we started carting other people's produce and then we became a licensed operator."
He was pipped at the post to buy trucking company Produce Freighter by Freightways, which then asked if he would manage it for them. He accepted and put his trucks into Freightways' fleet.
He said as the industry increasingly became palletised the company was the first to put curtainside trailers into its fleet.
"We were servicing every market in the North Island - just about every centre had a market, some two.
"Over a period of time Turners and Growers started to buy them and ultimately, to all intents and purposes, took total ownership of the markets and closed a lot of them down and dealt directly with supermarket chains."
He left Produce Freighters, which had grown to a fleet of 25 trucks: "After working seven days a week for three years I decided I had had enough."
He then worked for Bushetts Transport, setting up a transport arm in Hastings, which he bought out two years later.
He was approached by property advisers Logan Stone in 1995, asking if his company was interested in buying part of the closed Tomoana meatworks site in Hastings while Heinz Wattie's purchased the majority.
It was good timing - Carter Holt Harvey wished to set up a one-stop shop for orchardists' packaging goods - previously delivered by his trucks.
Two years later Carter Holt Harvey closed down their manufacturing site in Coventry Rd, leaving his Tomoana Warehousing Ltd (TWL) high and dry.
TWL was providing some storage for Heinz Wattie's, which increasingly took up TWL's spare capacity and then sold land to TWL to further develop Heinz Wattie's National Distribution Centre.
In 2003 the meatworks' wool scour buildings were replaced with purpose-built warehousing, adding 21,000sq m for a total of 30,000sq m.
The National Distribution Centre was increased to 50,000sq m and NZX-listed NPT bought it from Mr Taylor's property company.
With son Stewart's safe hands on the TWL reins as managing director, Trevor bought an adjoining 16ha site for the Food Hub "instead of sitting under a palm tree in the Bahamas for the rest of my life".
The Food Hub, a food processing and distribution centre under development, took five years to get resource consent due to it being zoned only for agriculture.
He said the region needed the Hub - Tomoana and Whakatu were close to capacity.
"We just can't keep developing fruit growing and the cropping without infrastructure. We have just got to take some of this land unfortunately.
"Hopefully Hub companies will utilise TWL's next-door services, as Wattie's does."
The Hub's first tenant is Miracle Water Holdings, which exports water sourced from a bore leased from and consented to Mr Taylor's company Elwood Road Holdings.
It's a joint venture.
"Right from day one I said we are not for sale and we are certainly not handing over our water consent holus bolus.
"I wasn't prepared to sell our natural resources to overseas interests - I firmly believe we should retain our natural resources - but to work in partnership is fine, don't just sell the whole lot."
Miracle's enterprise has revealed local xenophobia amid concern over potential aquifer degradation.
Mr Taylor said while there was a long-term consent in place "at any time the council has the right to say stop if there is an issue".
"They give you the legal right to take the water but that doesn't give you the ultimate full ownership."
"I spent $50,000 with a geoscientist to test our bore and six major bores within a 1km radius.
"Twice the volume of water was extracted than what was applied for more than 72 hours while measuring the other bores.
"Once we stopped pumping they measured the recovery for 24 hours by measuring the head of the bore. Surprisingly our own bore went from 3.8m to 5.6m after they had pumped the water out, which means we must of had cleared a lot of gravel allowing water to flow.
"The report said there was nil impact on surrounding bores, so that was really pleasing."
From its 23ha TWL has become the predominant third-party warehousing and third-party logistics company in Hawke's Bay, with about 8000sq m and 50 trucks.
Last year it bought Emmerson Transport's container-handling arm, as Emmerson looked to specialise.
He turned 71 last week and is not slowing down. Son Logan has also joined the business as business development manager, enabling Trevor to make more deals with prospective Hub tenants.
"I am very fortunate that I have my two sons involved with the family business which means that I do not need to worry about selling for retirement purposes.
"They bring skills to the business that I do not have, particularly with technology with both having studied technology degrees at Massey University in Industrial Engineering and Management.
"This gives our company significant advantages over some of our competitors in understanding the requirements of government regulations in both warehousing and transport."