rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">2 Young Eddie Stobart with his family
7 Edward, Anne, William and John
8 The family: (sitting, left to right) William, Nora, Eddie, Anne (standing) Edward and John
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
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
Section Two
1 The Wurzels performing ‘I Want to be an Eddie Stobart Driver’
2 The Blackpool illuminations, featuring Eddie Stobart Ltd – 1995
4 Eddie Stobart trucks setting off for Romania
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
14 Norman Bell’s retirement in 1990
15 Linda Shore in the fan club shop
17 Carlisle United Football Club – 1997
21 Edward receiving the ‘Haulier of the Year’ award
22 Edward with Deborah Rodgers
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