Hunter Davies - The Eddie Stobart Story

‘We had lunch in their canteen and then, eventually, we did get to see Alf himself. It was a short chat, in his office. He was very helpful, giving the Stobarts some of his time and a bit of advice.’

Edward, today, can remember the advice very clearly. ‘He asked us how many lorries we had at our place. We told him we had six – that was all we had at that particular time. His advice was that we should give them all up. Haulage was too tough a business. Get rid of the lorries and the drivers, he said. We’d be better off using owner-drivers for our business. So that was pretty depressing …’

But they did have a most interesting day out, enjoyed by all. Richard had been aware that Mr Sutton had not been particularly encouraging, haulage-wise but, looking back, he thinks Alf’s words might have had a positive effect on young Edward. ‘In a way, it spurred him on to prove people wrong. I think he saw what a fantastic setup Alf Sutton had and thought he could do just as well, if not better.’

In 1975, on reaching the age of twenty-one, Edward became a director of Eddie Stobart Ltd, joining his father Eddie and sister Anne. It was another good year for the firm, judging by the annual accounts. The turnover, from sales of goods and work done, was £407,138, but costs had been high and their net profit was just £19,647.

By 1975, Edward was looking after the haulage side of the business almost completely on his own. The accounts for the end of the year show a number of vehicles being bought and sold during that year but, on average, they were running eight lorries, plus the same number of trailers and units.

Edward was determined to improve this side of the business, but was finding many problems. He lost one good driver who didn’t want to do any long-distance work and drive further than the county boundaries. Rural-based, local country drivers from Hesket and Caldbeck, the sort they had always employed, many of whom Edward had grown up with, did not like doing night work or long-distance work. They were not keen, either, on anything that might be deemed urgent, drop everything, do-it-now work.

Almost all the haulage work the firm undertook was sub-contracted. A bigger haulage firm, elsewhere in Cumbria, would have the main contract, but would pass on bits to smaller firms like Eddie Stobart Ltd if they couldn’t manage it all. By definition, these were very often last-minute jobs, emergencies or night work, which Edward was keen to accept, however inconvenient. It often meant he did these rotten jobs himself, for in 1975, aged twenty-one, he had passed his Heavy Goods Vehicle licence. He could now legally drive any of the bigger trucks. But he knew he was missing a lot of work by not having suitable, willing men always available. It was also a handicap being stuck in Hesket, out in the sticks, some fifteen miles from Carlisle.

In 1976, Edward came to a big decision. He felt it was time to go it alone, in two senses. He wanted to be personally running his own show, albeit still under his father’s wing as part of the firm, as it hadn’t entered his head not to be part of Eddie Stobart Ltd. Edward, however, also wanted a chance to be able to work without his father looking over his shoulder every day. He felt it was time for the haulage part of Eddie Stobart Ltd to be separated, literally and physically, from the agricultural and fertilizing sides. He wanted to be in Carlisle, to employ Carlisle-based drivers, to be on the spot, for a change, when jobs came up.

He’d done some sums in his head, worked out how much time and money was being wasted each time they drove the fifteen miles empty into Carlisle, just to pick up a load. ‘I was fed up being at Hesket Newmarket. We’d outgrown the site, couldn’t really expand any more. The fertilizing side was not really growing and we didn’t need many more vehicles or men for that side of things. But I was sure the haulage side had a better future.’

Eddie listened to the arguments, the rationale, and willingly agreed with Edward. He says he’d been thinking much the same anyway. Edward’s own memory is that his father had to be persuaded. He remembers that, when he found a suitable site in Carlisle with a rent of £3000 a year, his father initially told him that he was ‘crackers’.

‘My dad didn’t see how I was going to make enough money to pay such a big rent. It was a big step for us, but my dad did agree it was the best thing to do, for all concerned. I will say that – he didn’t try to stop me.’

‘Edward was always the one with ambition,’ says Eddie. ‘He had always been suggesting better ways to do most things. John never had any interest at all. William was too young. But Edward always had this burning ambition. He was desperate to go into haulage.’

Once the big decision was made and Eddie saw how the family firm was beginning to split, with different parts and people going in different directions, he began to arrange a way of making it all neat and tidy. Eddie Stobart Ltd, since its creation in 1970, had consisted of three main parts: fertilizers, the farm shop and haulage. Eddie and daughter Anne were much more interested in the first two. It was therefore decided to parcel it up under a new name: Eddie Stobart Trading Ltd, which they would look after.

This left Eddie Stobart Ltd to concentrate on haulage. The bold young Edward, aged twenty-two, left the family yard in deepest, rural Hesket Newmarket, and headed for the big city, new people, new problems, new excitements.

His experience of haulage had been somewhat limited until then, despite his keenness and enthusiasm to get more work. And his day trip to Sutton’s, to see how a real haulage firm operated, had not exactly been inspiring. It just seemed to Edward, without really working it all out, without looking around at the wider world of haulage, that the time was right for him to go into something new. New, perhaps, for Edward Stobart, but something very, very old as far as the rest of the world was concerned.

HAULAGE – THE LONG HAUL

There were several reasons why Eddie Stobart had never really been interested in haulage. It was partly his temperament, partly that he was more interested in other things which appeared much more profitable, and partly the result of history.

At the time that Eddie first started up his own business in 1958, haulage was subject to various Acts of Parliament, endless Government rules, complicated amendments and changes, the issuing of special licences – all of which resulted in haulage becoming almost a closed shop. But it had always been like that. Politics, local or national, have usually managed to have a hand in transport, ever since transporting began.

They often say that prostitution is the oldest profession; lorry driving – or similar – must have also been one of the earliest trades. For the history of haulage is almost as old as the history of man. Ever since we stepped out of the caves, there has been a need for some sort of dragging, carrying, carting. Hunter-gatherers might have done their own hunting, but they quickly learned to get stronger people, or better sleds, to drag their spoils home.

The Romans built the first proper roads in Britain, and their military haulage system was constantly clattering up and down the country, bringing luxury goods such as shellfish to the middle of Hadrian’s Wall, as well as military equipment and supplies.

In medieval England, the establishment of local markets were both the cause and result of better haulage. All through history, transport has usually been at the heart of a nation’s economy – both rising and falling in tandem, each reflecting the state of the other, a gauge to what is really going on.

By the fifteenth century, most inhabitants of England were only ten miles from the nearest market, even if it was just a small one, like Hesket Newmarket. There was local transport, taking local goods to market, but also long-distance transport, humping items around the country, from market to market. Documents from as early as 1444 show that specialist carters were on the roads with their horses and carts, taking cloth from the Midlands and North to London, doing it on a regular, daily basis, although they packed up in winter when the roads, such as they were, became impassable.