Eddie Stobart, founder of the famous haulage firm and committed evangelical Christian, has died aged 95.
Growing up with Methodist parents in the 1930s, Eddie came to faith himself at a young age. According to The Guardian, at 17, he preached at his local chapel for the first time – finding, as he did, that a stammer he’d had since childhood had miraculously disappeared. ‘God took me by the hand. God helped me to cure it,’ he said.
Just a few years later, in his early 20s, he began his business distributing fertiliser to local farms and in 1960, he bought his first truck – painting it in the iconic red and green. In the coming years, Eddie Stobart Ltd was to grow to be worth £280 million and include over 2,000 lorries.
In the 1970s, while the business had eight trucks, he handed over control to his son, Edward, who was 19 years old at the time. ‘I never aimed to devote my life to work,’ Eddie explained in The Telegraph, ‘I am by nature fairly laid-back compared to Edward. I used to think to myself, what’s the point of all this worry and rush? We are here to serve God, not Mammon.’
From that point on, living near Carlisle, he focused primarily on his agricultural interests and on actively promoting the gospel. As well as being a part-time lay preacher, he was a faithful member of the Bible distributors, Gideons UK.
Eddie built a church in Wigton called Lowmoor Evangelical Church and was also responsible for ensuring the Christian book distributor Send the Light moved from Kent to Carlisle. Premier Christianity magazine reported that Bibles and Christian books were then shipped from what was known locally as ‘the Eddie Stobart book warehouse’ to all over the world.
Eddie is survived by his wife Nora, and children John, William and Anne. He lived from 1929 to 2024.
