Stobart (logistics company)
British multimodal logistics company based in Cheshire

Eddie Stobart Limited 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 transport, handling and warehousing facilities in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Belgium.
Founded by Eddie Stobart at the end of the 1940s as an agricultural business in Cumbria, the company diversified into rail and other activities. It is a subsidiary of the Culina Group, which is in turn a subsidiary of Müller.
History
The business was started by Eddie Stobart in the late 1940s as an agricultural business in Cumbria. His son, Edward Stobart Junior, started working for his father's contracting business delivering agricultural material in the region. The first truck bought by Eddie Stobart in 1960 was painted post-office red and Brunswick green with yellow lettering. These colours were used for subsequent vehicles up to 1969. The company was incorporated as Eddie Stobart Ltd on 23 November 1970 as a haulage firm, and Eddie Stobart controlled the organisation fully until 1973, when, at the age of 19, Edward Stobart became CEO. In 1976 Eddie retired and Edward took full control of the road haulage business and the name Eddie Stobart Ltd in 1976, becoming Chairman.
By 1985 Edward Stobart owned 26 vehicles. The business was characterised by its Tautliner bodies.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stobart (logistics company)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.