Edward Pears Stobart (born 18 April 1929), better known as Eddie Stobart, is a British businessman who started an

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

business in the late 1940s. This became ''Eddie Stobart Ltd'' in 1970 and expanded to a

haulage Haulage is the business of transporting goods by road or rail between suppliers and large consumer outlets, factories, warehouses, or depots. This includes everything humans might wish to move in bulk - from vegetables and other foodstuffs, to cloth ...

company during the 1970s with the help of his late son

Edward Stobart Edward Stobart (21 November 1954 – 31 March 2011) was a British haulage company owner who first became involved with his father's company aged 15 in 1969, and subsequently expanded it into one of the UK's most well known multimodal logistics ...

who gradually took over the running of the company. In 2004, the youngest son

William Stobart William Stobart (born November 1961) is the Deputy Group CEO of Culina Group (owner of the Eddie Stobart Group). Career Stobart was born in Cumberland in England in November 1961, the fourth child of Eddie and Nora Stobart. He worked for the ...

and Andrew Tinkler (William Stobart's then brother in law) bought the company. Eventually the company demerged and became two separate public companies: the

Stobart Group Esken Limited (), formerly Stobart Group Limited, is a British infrastructure, aviation and energy company, with operations in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company is registered in Guernsey but has its operational head office in Londo ...

and

Eddie Stobart Logistics Eddie Stobart Group is a British multimodal logistics company, with interests in road haulage, rail freight, deep sea and inland waterway transport systems and deep sea port, inland port and rail connected storage facilities, along with transpor ...

Life and career

He was born to John and Adelaide Stobart in July 1929. Stobart married Nora Boyd on 26 December 1951 and they live in

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumb ...

. They had four children: Anne (born 1952), John (born 1953), Edward (1954–2011) and William (born 1961). Eddie bought his first lorry (a Guy Invincible four-wheeler truck) second-hand from the local garage in 1960, and had it re-painted in his choice of colours: post office red and Brunswick green. He took over the collection of

basic slag Slag is a by-product of smelting (pyrometallurgical) ores and used metals. Broadly, it can be classified as ferrous (by-products of processing iron and steel), ferroalloy (by-product of ferroalloy production) or non-ferrous/base metals (by-produ ...

(a waste product of steelworks used as fertiliser) when local company ''Harrison Ivinson'' went out of business, and purchased two Ford Thames Trader trucks which were also painted in his favourite colours with his logo on the doors. A contract with ICI for storage of basic slag in 1963 enabled expansion of the business, and it became a limited company: ''Eddie Stobart Ltd'' in November 1970 with a share value of ten thousand pounds. In 1978 with a downturn in the Economy Eddie had 8 vehicles on the road along with a leased vehicle to Pickervance.Noel Davidson (1998). ''Only the Best will do: The Eddie Stobart Story'', pages 76, 88 and 124. Ambassador, . Eddie continued to run the company until 1976, when son Edward took over running the transport side, but father Eddie continued to be involved, and retained his own separate warehouse until 1989, when he handed over full control to his sons Edward and William, retaining the title of non-executive chairman of ''Eddie Stobart Ltd'' until December 1992. The business grew into one of the largest privately owned transport and distribution companies in England, controlling around 2,500 trucks.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stobart, Eddie 1929 births Living people People from Cumbria 20th-century English businesspeople British businesspeople in shipping