Page 118 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

We had no idea that anything like this was “in the wings” and the first thing we knew was
when the Uniroyal national Distribution Manager made an appointment to come and see
us.
Our small operation collecting complaint tyres already covered the whole of eastern UK on
a regular basis. Our vehicles were built to carry tyres but they were not terribly smart!

Brian Daltry the Uniroyal man, was ex Guards and a real gentleman. During all the time we
worked for him, he was totally honest and was always prepared to advise and assist.
His position as Distribution Chief was to put Uniroyal “on the map” in the UK.
They had a small number of their own wholesale warehouses but insufficient to cope with
large regular deliveries.
The “entrepot” idea came from Europe where Uniroyal used local distributors to provide
the service. This obviously saved capital cost for the company and gave their retail clients
security of local stock availability.
We came to an agreement to be the Uniroyal stocking point for the Lincolnshire and some
parts of Norfolk and Cambridge.
Later this was to extend to the East Midlands with a further depot at Loughborough. More
of that later.

BACK AT OUR YARD
Back at our yard, the location at New Bolingbroke, just towards the bottom half of
Lincolnshire suited the Uniroyal area well as it extended from the Humber in the North, to
North Cambridgeshire and North Norfolk to Thetford in the South. To the East was the
North Sea and the boundary to the West was the A1.
All the Uniroyal stock was to be held in our old maltings, a tile roofed building about 160
years old, ideal for tyres being devoid of sunlight and well cool.

My first trip to mainland Europe had been planned to mix business with pleasure.
We were to be entertained and shown a typical French entrepot by Uniroyal at Rennes,
capital of Brittany and also home of Ruth’s pen friend and her family.

Our family transport and off to France for the first time was 432 GFU the 1962 bright red
Mk2 Jaguar saloon that we have mentioned in previous tales.

Albert, no 1 driver, our very first employee and Michael,
Ruth’s youngest brother, were in charge of putting in the
new concrete floor ready for the new tyre stock!

Six inches depth of concrete was what we had decided and
the building being 200 feet long and 30 feet wide it was
more than we could manage with a manual mixer.
“Readymix” was ordered and duly arrived in my absence.
(thank goodness).
We heard tales of several mixers arriving at the same time,
tales of this and tales of that. But the best tale of all was
when a larger than before mixer arrived, duly deposited its
load and then could not get out of the building.
Two large sliding doors were the only access. One reason why for security the building
was ideal.
Above these doors was a huge wooden lintel supporting the door mechanism.

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