The Eddie Stobart Story. Hunter Davies
got his Mini Clubman and most of his subsequent cars serviced in Hesket, in the village garage owned by Richard Woodcock, which stood right in the middle of the village, in what was the ancient market cross. In 1972, Richard’s sixteen-year-old sister, Anne Woodcock, came to work for Eddie in his office, typing letters and invoices; her first job after leaving school.
Anne Stobart, Edward’s big sister, the clever one who had gone to grammar school, had been working with her father as his secretary until then. She moved over to work in the farm shop in Wigton once young Anne Woodcock had settled into her job.
‘My mother had just died,’ says Anne Woodcock, ‘and Eddie and Nora were really kind to me, giving me the job, looking after me. I was with them for two years. My wage was about £15 a week and I think at the time they had ten vehicles altogether. It was mainly agricultural work, lime-spreading and slag, but they did do quite a bit of haulage. I remember when they secured some sub-contract haulage work from Barnett and Graham: that was a big event.
‘I knew the family were strong Methodists; Eddie and Nora and Anne. Every year at Keswick Convention time, they would talk about it, perhaps hoping I might go with them. I’m Catholic by birth, so it wasn’t really my thing. But they were very tolerant really. Other members of their family were much stricter.’
Anne enjoyed working with the two Stobart boys around, as John and Edward were just a few years older than herself. ‘Edward and John were just normal farm boys. Like most of the others in Caldbeck and Hesket, they’d go for a drink on a Saturday night in Hesket or Caldbeck, or into Carlisle to the dance at the Cosmo – the Cosmo was where all the country boys went. I went there as well.
‘At work. I have to say, I wasn’t aware of Edward running anything, of being in charge in any way. He did most things in the business, but Eddie the father seemed to me definitely the boss.
‘I was impressed by how Edward coped with his stutter. William’s was far worse, so much so that often he couldn’t talk at all, but Edward never let his get him down. He was determined to carry on as normal. Edward didn’t lack confidence, I’ll say that, but I have to say I had no idea he would go further than he’d got to already. When I worked with the Stobarts, it was just a small family business. And it seemed as if it always would be like that.’
During the two years Anne worked with the Stobarts, Edward had a rather nasty accident. Aged eighteen, he was working as usual one Saturday morning, up at six to start lime-spreading. Having finished, he came back to the yard in the late afternoon where he met Clive Richardson, one of their drivers, who had come into the yard to pick up something.
Edward asked Clive if he had got the message about his Monday job, one which Edward had personally fixed up for him on Friday. He’d given all the details to his father, to pass on to Clive.
‘Oh he cancelled it,’ said Clive. ‘I’m not working Monday.’
‘Why not?’ asked Edward.
‘I’d forgotten my wagon needs four new tyres. So I’m going to do that on Monday instead.’
Edward went straight to the phone and rang Barnett and Graham, the firm through which the job had come. He cancelled the cancellation, saying a Stobart truck would be there after all to do the job, and not to worry.
Edward then searched around the yard and eventually found four half-reasonably tyred wheels, which he thought were good enough to go on the truck, an Atkinson 240.
‘My dad wasn’t around, of course; he never was on a Saturday. I think that day he’d gone to Wigton to see how the shop was doing. Clive, the driver, was a bit disgruntled at first, as he was in a hurry to get home, but he agreed to help me get the old wheels off.’
They were very heavy wheels and the last one was proving difficult to get off. At last they managed it but, in doing so, the wheel somehow did a bounce and crashed into Edward. He was fit enough, with all the physical labour he had been doing since the age of twelve, but he was never very tall, just five feet, six inches high and, at eighteen, he was only eight stone in weight. The impact of the large bouncing wheel knocked Edward over. He fell down in a heap, breaking his leg.
Clive rang for an ambulance, then rang to tell Mr Stobart, Senior, what had happened. Meanwhile, Edward was in agony, lying on the ground, unable to move. He was also starting to shiver, as it was a very cold afternoon.
‘The ambulance men arrived first, before my dad. They got out this blow-up bag thing and put my left leg in a splint, then they laid me on the stretcher. They were about to give me a pain-killing injection, which probably would have knocked me out, when at last my dad arrived.
‘With a great struggle, I managed somehow to lean over on my side, get me hand in me front pocket, and I drew out my money. It was about £600 or £700. I didn’t want to go into hospital, did I, carrying all that with me? At hospital, they’d take my clothes off, put me into hospital pyjamas and that. I might never see the money again. So the last thing I remember doing, before the ambulance took me away, was handing it over. But, by then, I knew the truck was OK and the job would be done on Monday.’
Eddie remembers the incident well, and the precise words which Edward used: ‘Tek hod o’ this, Dad,’ Eddie wasn’t totally surprised; he and Nora always knew Edward kept his money on him. Many a time, Nora had ruined some of his pound notes in the washing machine when he’d forgotten to take them out of his trouser pocket.
‘When I’d been Edward’s age,’ says Eddie, ‘my father had never given me a wage when I’d worked with him. So I always made sure that Edward and then William, when they worked with me, got a wage, just like the other workers.
‘They had, of course, nothing to spend it on. There was no drugs in those days and they didn’t live a wild life. So we knew Edward must have saved a bit of money. Even so, we didn’t know till that day quite how much he’d been carrying around with him. That was a surprise.’
Edward was taken to the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle. His leg was fractured in two places and it took the next seven-and-a-half weeks for him to recover. For the first week or so, he was in agony. Then he was in total frustration, wondering about what was happening back at the ranch.
‘All the drivers came in at the weekends to see me: Norman Bell, Norman Glendinning, Stan Monkhouse, Clive and Selwyn Richardson, John Graham, Gavin Clark. I used to quiz each one on what me dad was doing: “Is he keeping you working?” I’d say, “Who’s planning next week?”
‘I was so miserable, stuck there. It was the worst time in my whole life. Certainly the slowest – I just lay there, thinking about the trucks, night and day. I wasn’t spying on my dad, when I was asking the drivers about him. I just worried that the lorry side would collapse while I was away.’
Edward’s father was very pleased when, at last, Edward could return to work. ‘Oh, I wanted him back as quickly as possible as well. Edward had been doing all the planning for the trucks. And by then, he really had become daft about trucks ….’
Until 1970, Eddie Stobart had been trading simply as ‘E.P. Stobart, Hesket Newmarket’. But, as the business grew with more employees, more tax to pay, more financial responsibilities, more things to go wrong or be sued for, it was time to become a limited company. On 23 November 1970, a new company was formed: Eddie Stobart Ltd.
In the accounts for the second half of that year, under assets, eight assorted lorries are listed, including a new Scania wagon and trailer, bought at a cost of £9000. There was a reported loss of £409, but that was partly explained by the firm being reorganized and the expense of the Scania.
The new company had two shareholders. Eddie Stobart owned nine thousand of the ten thousand shares. His daughter, Anne, who reached the age of eighteen that year, was given the remaining one thousand shares. It was Eddie’s plan to give each of his four children, once they reached the age of eighteen, a thousand shares.
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