Founder of renowned haulage firm dies aged 95
18th December 2024
Eddie Stobart, who started an agriculture business in the 40s, which later developed into one of Britain’s largest haulage firms, has died.
Tributes have begun pouring in for Eddie Stobart, founder of the well known logistics brand.
Eddie was born in 1929 and started an agriculture business in the late 1940s, distributing fertiliser and doing contract work for local farms.
The business became Eddie Stobart Limited in 1970 and expanded into a haulage company with the help of his son, also called Edward, who gradually took over the running of the company.
Origins in farming
Eddie grew up on the family’s 32-acre smallholding with eight cows, at Hesket Newmarket, south of Carlisle.
After leaving school at 14 he helped his father on the farm and took on occasional horse and cart work for the council.
He married in 1951 and lived in Cumbria with his wife Nora and four children, Anne, John, Edward and William.
The company’s first lorry was a second-hand Guy Invincible four-wheeler truck, which he repainted in red and green.
Taking over from a local business which went bust he began collecting slag, the fertiliser by-product of industrial steel-making, and bought two Ford Thames Trader trucks.
A contract with ICI in 1963 allowed him to expand the business and it became a limited company in 1970.
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Iconic brand
By 1978, he had eight vehicles on the road and 12 employees, before passing on the transport side of the business to his son Edward in 1976.
The business now owns more than 2,700 vehicles and is one of Britain’s biggest logistics brands.
It became known for giving the lorries names, starting with Twiggy after the model. Media reports credit him with changing public perceptions of the haulage industry, insisting that drivers wear collars and ties.
Edward passed away in 2011 at the age of 56 from a suspected heart attack.
Edward’s brothers William and John took over the business after it went through financial difficulties in the 2000s.
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