The Eddie Stobart Story. Hunter Davies

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and decided to move into Carlisle, the laws had changed again. In 1968, the Labour Government’s Transport Bill did away with thirty-five years of restrictions. A- and B-licences were scrapped; all hauliers, of any size, were suddenly free to transport goods over any distance.

      Without realizing it, Edward was fortunate to come into the haulage business at the time he did. Ten years earlier and he would have found it very much harder. On the other hand, there were immediately hordes of little lorry firms again.

      In 1976, some 900,000 lorries were trundling around Britain, a great many of them owned by small-time, agricultural contractors and part-time hauliers such as the Stobarts. All were competing for business, all hoping to grow and expand.

HELLO CARLISLE

      The premises Edward moved into in Carlisle in 1976 were in Greystone Road, quite near the middle of the city, not far from Brunton Park, world-famous home of Carlisle United FC. It was the time when, back in the 1974–75 season, CUFC surprised, nay amazed, everyone by getting into the First Division. On 24 August 1974, they beat Tottenham Hotspur at Brunton Park, 1–0, before a crowd of 18,426 and, after three games, they zoomed to the top of the league. A perilous position, from which they soon grew dizzy and fell fast. They lasted only one season in the top flight, before dropping back to the Second Division.

      But it did mean that, on match days in 1976, there were still quite reasonable crowds coming to watch Carlisle – some of whom took advantage of temporary, match-day-only parking spaces in the rather tatty, rather limited new premises of Eddie Stobart Ltd in Greystone Road. It made Edward and his staff a few bob, which went into the joint kitty to pay for cornflakes, milk, chips and other necessities of life.

      The yard staff consisted of only two people when the premises first opened, both of whom Edward brought with him from Hesket. There was Stan Monkhouse, then aged thirty-five, who had been working with Edward’s father since 1960. He was born and brought up on a farm not far from Hesket and had been a farm worker till joining Eddie, aged eighteen, as a tractor driver. At the age of twenty-one, he had graduated to lorry driver, which he did for the next ten years, going back and forth from Hesket to places like Scunthorpe and Corby, carrying loads of slag.

      He’d got married, had children and a home in Hesket, and was becoming a bit fed up with being away so much. Therefore, in 1973, when Edward offered him the chance to be the lorry maintenance man at Newlands rather than a lorry driver, he jumped at it.

      ‘I’d been off for six months at the time,’ recollects Stan. ‘I broke my arm, falling off a trailer. When I got back, Eddie was having problems with his maintenance man, and asked me if I was interested in the job. I said yis, aye, I’ll give it a go.’

      Three years later, when young Edward asked Stan to come into Carlisle to look after the maintenance of his lorries, he said ‘yis, aye’, again. He could still come home every evening and thought it might be interesting, being part of a new venture.

      ‘They were very different,’ says Stan, ‘Edward and his father. I’d always got on with Eddie, he’d been very good to me, a perfect boss, but I just fancied a change.

      ‘I think Eddie was a bit reluctant about the move, but Edward had outgrown Hesket. We’d had one or two orders from Metal Box in Carlisle, in 1973 I think it was, which meant going into Carlisle to load up, bringing them back to Hesket, leaving them overnight, then delivering next day. Edward could see that being so far from Carlisle was a handicap and lost us time and money.

      ‘Eddie liked being a bit of a wheeler-dealer, going to agricultural auctions, buying and selling produce and fertilizers, mixing with the farmers, having a crack. Edward didn’t like any of that side of things. I could see Edward had a vision, though I didn’t know where it would lead.’

      The other member of staff at Greystone Road was Stan’s apprentice, seventeen-year-old David Jackson, a very cheerful, sunny-natured lad who came from a farming family at Shap. He had been working with the Stobarts for seven months, running errands, sweeping the floor, going into Carlisle to pick up parts. He was four years younger than Edward but they became close friends, both having been poor scholars at school, both preferring to work with their hands rather than sitting at desks.

      There was parking space for fifteen vehicles when they arrived at Greystone Road, though in that first year they had no more than eight. ‘It was all very basic when we arrived,’ says David. ‘There was no pit. It meant you had to lie flat on your back on the ground to work under the vehicles. It was very hard work; we all had to knuckle down.

      ‘Stan and Edward did most of the driving, till Edward started hiring local drivers. I was quite relieved: I didn’t have a class-one licence at the time, but I was so tired after each day in the garage, I couldn’t have taken a lorry out at night.

      ‘I once went to Glasgow with Edward overnight. I think he just took me with him as company, to keep him awake. We got back at four in the morning, too late for either of us to go home. There were some old shelves in what we called the bait cabin, where we ate our sandwiches. Edward cleared the shelves and we slept on them – as if they were bunk beds. Oh, I didn’t mind. I did the job for love, not for money. It was exciting.’

      David smiles as he recollects the excitement of the early days. ‘I can’t put it into words: it just was. It felt good, being part of it. And we did have some good laughs. Edward in those days quite liked playing practical jokes.’ Edward himself, when pressed, also remembers having water fights with the hose pipes, after the end of a long day’s work.

      Nora Stobart remembers David and Edward both larking around in those early years at Greystone Road. The drivers would be out all day on a job, leaving Stan and David in the yard, working on repairs and maintenance. Edward would be in his little office, trying to drum up work, unless he was out on an emergency job. No one could have told the difference between the three of them, as they were all in boiler suits, all pretty scruffy.

      ‘There was a rep they didn’t like who started calling, asking to see Mr Stobart,’ says Nora. ‘They didn’t want to see him so, next time he came, Edward and David climbed on a roof and pretended to be crackers, pulling faces. When asked if Mr Stobart was in, they both said “Who?” He went away and never came back.’

      Edward, in fact, frequently pretended not to be who he was, even when he wasn’t well known. He says now, ‘If customers saw I was driving the lorries myself, they might think what sort of firm is this, why is he behind the wheel not at his desk?’

      In the evenings, after work, Edward and David went out for a meal now and again, chased girls together, now and again, and, in the summer, they usually went on their week’s holiday together. One year they went to Newquay, along with two other country lads. But, mainly, it was long hours and hard work.

      ‘If I ever did manage to get a girlfriend,’ says Edward, ‘work always came first. I’d cancel a date if a job came up. The way I lived, I didn’t meet many girls anyway. My fingernails were always dirty and my hands oily. Most of my Saturday nights were spent at places like Beattock, eating egg and chips in a transport caff, having tipped a load at Motherwell.’

      Edward did drink and smoke at the time, so he was not totally without pleasures or vices. David remembers him going through a packet of twenty cigarettes, one after the other, but then he wouldn’t have another one for days. He also had long hair, like most lads in the Seventies.

      ‘I was looked upon as the first Stobart rebel,’ recollects Edward. ‘I wasn’t really, of course, but my father and grandfather had always been strictly religious. My father did once catch me СКАЧАТЬ