Hunter Davies - The Eddie Stobart Story

COPYRIGHT

HarperNonFiction

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2001

Copyright © Hunter Davies 2001

Hunter Davies asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007336616

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008226503

Version: 2016-10-11

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Illustrations

Introduction

Where it all Began …

The Stobarts

Young Edward

Edward Goes to Work

Edward Goes to Town

Haulage – the Long Haul

Hello Carlisle

Pink Elephants

A Wedding and a Warehouse

Motorways Cometh

Edward Faces a Dilemma

The New Management Men

Branching Out

What Edward Did Upstairs

The Birth of the Fan Club

Bad-Mouthing

Money Matters

Daventry

The Fan Club Today

The Fans

Spin-Offs

Up the Management Men

Problems, Problems

Up the Workers

The Firm Today – and its Future

Expert Witnesses

The Stobarts Today

Edward Today

Appendices

A Haulage Glossary

B The Stobarts: a Who’s Who

C Eddie Stobart Limited: Chronology

D Lorry Names

E Eddie Stobart Fan Club

F Eddie Stobart Depots

G Top Haulage Firms: 2000

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

ILLUSTRATIONS

Section One

1 John Stobart’s wedding

2 Young Eddie Stobart with his family

3 Caldbeck, Cumberland

4 Eddie and Nora’s wedding

5 Edward, Anne and John

6 Edward at primary school

7 Edward, Anne, William and John

8 The family: ( sitting, left to right ) William, Nora, Eddie, Anne ( standing ) Edward and John

9 The farm shop at Wigton

10 Eddie Stobart Ltd at the Cumberland show in the early Seventies

11 An early Scania lorry, drives through Hesket

12 Freshly washed lorries at Greystone Road

13 Edward with drivers Bob McKinnel and Neville Jackson

14 Edward at Greystone Road

15 The new Kingstown site, bought in 1980

16 William and Edward in the early Kingstown days

17 Edward’s wedding to Sylvia, in 1980

18 William with his truck

19 The first Stobart vehicle in Metal Box livery – 1987 ( left to right ) Colin Rutherford, Stuart Allan, Edward

Section Two

1 The Wurzels performing ‘I Want to be an Eddie Stobart Driver’

2 The Blackpool illuminations, featuring Eddie Stobart Ltd – 1995

3 Charity panto event

4 Eddie Stobart trucks setting off for Romania

5 The Kingstown depot

6 Princess Anne and Edward, at the opening of the Daventry site

7 The huge Daventry depot today

8 The beginning of 25-anniversary celebrations at the Dorchester

9 Edward celebrating with Jools Holland

10 Celebrating with the truck Twiggy

11 Barrie Thomas

12 David Jackson

13 Colin Rutherford

14 Norman Bell’s retirement in 1990

15 Linda Shore in the fan club shop

16 Truck driver Billy Dowell

17 Carlisle United Football Club – 1997

18 William today

19 Edward and Nora today

20 Edward with William Hague

21 Edward receiving the ‘Haulier of the Year’ award

22 Edward with Deborah Rodgers

INTRODUCTION

Edward Stobart is Cumbria’s greatest living Cumbrian. Not a great deal of competition, you might think, as Cumbria is a rural county, with only twenty settlements with a population greater than 2500. But our native sons do include Lord Bragg.

I used to say the greatest living Cumbrian was Alfred Wainwright, though he was a newcomer, who assumed Cumbrian nationality when he fell in love with Lakeland and then moved to Kendal. Wainwright, like Eddie Stobart, became a cult, acquiring an enormous following without ever really trying. In fact Wainwright discouraged fans, refusing to speak to other walkers when he met them, not allowing his photograph to appear on his guide books, never doing signing sessions. Yet he went on to sell millions of copies of his books.

Edward Stobart, the hero of this book, not to be confused with his father, Eddie Stobart, still lives in Cumbria and the world HQ of Eddie Stobart Limited is still in Carlisle. In the last ten years, it has become a household name all over the country, at least in households who have chanced to drive along one of our motorways, which means most of us. Today, the largest part of his business is now situated elsewhere in England, yet Edward remains close to his roots.

I am a fellow Cumbrian, so I boast, if not quite a genuine one as I was born in Scotland, only moving to Carlisle when I was aged four. But I know whence the Stobarts have come, know well their little Cumbrian home village, know many of their friends – and that to me is one of the many intriguing aspects of their rise. How did they get here, from there of all places?

I had met Edward, before beginning this book, at the House of Lords, guests of the late Lord Whitelaw. It was a reception for Ambassadors for Cumbria, a purely honorary title, dreamed up by some marketing whiz. I talked to Edward for a while, but didn’t get very far. He doesn’t go in for idle chat, doesn’t care for social occasions, doesn’t really like talking much, being hesitant with strangers, very reserved and private. Despite the firm’s present-day fame, I can’t remember seeing him interviewed on television, hearing him on the radio and I seldom see his face in the newspapers.

So this was another thought that struck me. Having got from there, that little village I used to know so well, how did Edward Stobart then become a national force, when he himself appears so unpushy, unfluent, undynamic?

The fact that he has risen to fame and fortune through lorries, creating the biggest private firm in Britain, is also interesting. It’s so unmodern, unglamorous. He’s now regularly on The Sunday Times list of the wealthiest people in Britain but, unlike so many of the other entries, he actually owns things. There is a concrete, physical presence to his fortune. The wealth of many of our present-day self-made millionaires is very often abstract, either on paper or out there on the ether; liable to fall and disappear in a puff of smoke or a blank screen.

Haulage is old technology; so old it’s practically prehistoric. Hauling stuff from A to B, real stuff as opposed to messages and information, has always been with us. And over the centuries it has sent out its own messages, giving us clues to the state of the economy, the state of the nation. By following the rise of our leading haulage firm over the last thirty years, since Eddie Stobart Limited was created in 1970, we should also be able to observe glimpses of the history of our times.