Page 115 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

A small station had been built alongside the entrance to the Foundry so “passengers”
could get on and off without difficulty.
John could always be sure of plenty of custom and the pleasure in the faces of those
children was gratitude enough for all the hard work he put into maintaining that beautiful
and very complicated piece of moving history. When Alan, John's youngest son was old
enough to take on the responsibility, then he was the family member who provided the
thrills for the village children.

CHAPTER 23

FOSSITT AND THORNE AND

FIRESTONE AND UNIROYAL

This would be a good time to expand on the Uniroyal experience. This story also
runs on through the whole life of ECYB Transport and continues in one piece as, the
reader will realise it would be very difficult to tell such a complicated tale in bits and
pieces.
The tales that follow consequently slot into the years that they happened.

ECYB the tyre distribution business set up and run by Ruth and myself was appointed the
very first “entrepot” for Uniroyal in the UK and as it so happened the last to close in 1983.
These were some of the best times we ever had commercially, largely because of our
relationship with Fossitt and Thorne.
Quite by coincidence these times corresponded with a similar experience in the history of
the Fossitt and Thorne company.

FOSSITT AND THORNE
It would help to explain a little more here in case I did not make myself understood
previously, or you have forgotten some detail somewhere back in these stories
.
Harry Thorne and Jim Fossitt set up their motor tyre retail company in rural South
Lincolnshire after the second World War.
It had very small beginnings and existed for a long time just in Kirton a small village just
south of Boston.
They were the classic chalk and cheese couple. Harry the outgoing entrepreneur, Jim the
long faced, tending to be pessimistic and cautious “figures” man.
Gradually, during the late 1950’s and into the 1960’s they engaged two dynamic
managers, Geoff Fossitt at Kirton. (No immediately direct relation to Jim) and Keith Roe at
a new depot in Lincoln.
This was the beginning of steady systematic growth for the company and retail depots
grew in Scunthorpe, Barton on Humber, Cleethorpes, Louth, Boston, Long Sutton, Bourne,
Downham Market and Nottingham.
Harry made sure that strong management in the major locations controlled and continued
his original ideals of “a service equalled by no other”.

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