The Eddie Stobart Story. Hunter Davies

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 drinking. He made out it was the end of the world, that I’d done something really bad. I’d made it worse by taking William with me. He was only eleven at the time …’

      On the business side of matters, the new drivers the firm hired from Carlisle didn’t always turn out to be as good as they would have liked. ‘One of them blew an engine,’ says David, ‘totally ruined a new lorry, just by being inexperienced. Another time, I came in one morning to find our best lorry had been turned over by a new driver in the night. It had rolled over and the cab was all bashed in. Edward looked at it and said to Stan and me: “Tha’s got to have that’un on the road by tonight.” We couldn’t believe he was serious. It was in such a terrible state. But Stan and me set to, using about four jacks to support it, stop it falling to pieces while we worked on it, welding it together. We got it roadworthy in eight hours, working non-stop.’

      David got the odd ear-bashing from Edward if he did something wrong, but says Edward never held it against him. ‘All the drivers respected him. They could see he was doing the same work as they were – and a lot more.

      ‘When we heard him saying: “No problem” on the telephone, we knew there were going to be problems. Edward would accept any work, anywhere, even if all the drivers were out, even if it meant dumping loaded goods in our garage in order to go off and pick up another load. There was nothing illegal about this. Stuff always got delivered on time, as promised. But we wouldn’t have liked, say, someone from Metal Box to arrive and find their goods piled up on our garage floor.

      ‘Edward, from the beginning, always wanted his lorries clean. We had to do them every weekend. Even on Christmas Eve, Edward always insisted that all wagons had to be washed and parked up before Stan and me went home, even if it was eight o’clock and we’d been working hard all day. He wanted everything left spick and span. It was as if it was the lorries’ Christmas Eve as well ….’

      Edward says he could never get to sleep on a Sunday or over any bank-holiday period if he thought any of his lorries had been left dirty. ‘I’d never call myself a trucker. Still don’t; I’m not the sort who’s in love with lorries, who would go spotting. I look upon lorries as tools, there to do a job. And as with all tools, you should look after them as best you can. Lorries are a bit like ladies, aren’t they? If they look good, you’re on the right track ….’ A metaphor which probably should not be explored too closely.

      In its first year, Edward’s firm expanded from eight to twelve trucks, but was then hit by a steel strike. ‘The whole haulage industry had a terrible time,’ says David. ‘Edward didn’t want to lay off any of the drivers, so what he did was take the tax off six vehicles. That saved him some money. He then put our twelve drivers on one week on, one week off, till work came in again.’

      After a couple of years at Greystone Road, Edward acquired an old Portakabin which gave him more space. He used this as his office, and also as his sleeping quarters, if he came back too late after an emergency driving job, up to Glasgow, or down to Birmingham. It meant that, for days at a time, often for a whole week, he would not go home to Hesket and his own bed.

      He became obsessed by sending out his lorries each day as cleanly as possible, even if it meant that he was the one to stay late the night before in order to wash them. ‘I didn’t ask the drivers to do it,’ Edward explains. ‘They were paid to drive, not wash. So if I wanted them all clean, I had to do it.

      ‘What I was trying to do was move up-market. And that, mainly, meant trying to get cleaner work. Doing tipper work, carrying slag and fertilizers, or quarry work, as we’d been doing at Hesket, was the bottom end of the market, the dirty end. I wanted to move into food and drink, the clean end. You didn’t need tippers for this. You needed flat-bed trailers, where the pallets could be laid.

      ‘I persuaded my dad we needed two flat-bed trailers, Crane Fruehauf flat-bed trailers they were, which we bought from Grahams of Bass Lake. They cost £1750 each.’

      Not content with moving up to flat-bed trailers, Edward wanted them to be the very latest versions. Most hauliers of the time had open-sided, flat-bedded lorries, as opposed to tippers, and piled the pallets or the goods on the back, covered them with a bit of canvas to keep them dry, then secured them with ropes. This often led to ungainly, dangerous loads, exposed to the elements.