His was the name that adorned a thousand lorries, so familiar on the motorways of Britain that families would while away long journeys by counting them and recording their individual names – each was emblazoned with a woman’s name. Yet Eddie Stobart, who has died aged 95, owned just eight trucks when he handed over the Cumbria-based business in the 1970s to his son Edward to run, concentrating instead on his agricultural interests and his active religious faith.
Edward would build Eddie Stobart Ltd into a trucking business that at one point had more than 2,000 lorries and was eventually sold for £280m. He insisted on having his father’s name (not his own) painted on the side of the vehicles as the company built up its reputation for well-maintained, high-quality vehicles, with uniformed drivers, and benefited from the huge growth in road haulage and moving goods by road rather than rail.
Eddie, however, continued with the range of agricultural activities (in a business renamed Eddie Stobart Trading) for which he had purchased his first lorry – distributing and spreading fertiliser and carrying out a range of other operations for local farmers. His vehicles had carried only a modest “E.P. Stobart” on the doors of their cabs. He would later explain that had he known how celebrated Eddie Stobart Ltd, the truck company, would become, he would never have agreed to the use of his name.
Eddie made Edward chief executive of his transport business in 1973, when his son was 19, and handed him control as chairman three years later. He explained “I never aimed to devote my life to work … I am by nature fairly laidback compared to Edward. I used to think to myself, what’s the point of all his worry and rush? We are here to serve God, not Mammon … I was still a director of Eddie Stobart Ltd, but board meetings consisted of me sitting in an armchair at home while Edward was ringing me from somewhere on the M6 telling me what he was doing.”
He also wanted to devote more time to his activities as a devout evangelical Christian. The child of Methodists, Eddie had met his future wife, Nora Byrd, at a bible rally. They married in 1951 and became supporters of the Free Evangelical church, contributing to the construction of a chapel at Wigton, Cumbria. Eddie was a part-time lay preacher. Nora was also active in the Gideon Bible movement which distributes free bibles. He described how his childhood stammer suddenly disappeared when, aged 17, he had to stand up and address his local chapel for the first time. “God took me by the hand. God helped me to cure it.”
Eddie was the son of Adelaide and John Stobart, who farmed a 32-acre smallholding with eight cows at Hesket Newmarket in Cumbria. His mother died when Eddie was 12 and he left the village school at Howbeck to work on the farm at 14. He found extra work helping out farmers and carrying out horse-and-cart work for the county council.
With business flair, he bought his first horse to draw farm machinery and on its sale he invested the profit on its sale in chickens. With his father and brother he set up an agricultural business in 1946 to carry out services for local farmers including deliveries. But it was not until 1960 that he bought his first truck, a secondhand Guy Invincible, from a local garage.
He repainted it in pillar-box red and Brunswick green, and used it for deliveries of slag from steelworks, which made a popular fertiliser. The business took off when the demise of a local firm allowed him to take over a valuable ICI contract for slag and he bought two more trucks.
After handing over transport to Edward, Eddie (sometimes known as “Fast Eddie”) ran his agricultural business with his daughter Anne until 1980, when he invested instead in an industrial warehouse in Carlisle.
While he enjoyed Edward’s success, he was saddened when his son sold the business in 2004 and by the subsequent struggles of the company and Edward’s later business ventures. Edward died bankrupt in 2011.
Eddie is survived by Nora, two sons, John and William, and Anne.
• Eddie (Edward Pears) Stobart, farmer and haulier, born 18 April 1929; died 25 November 2024
