Page 130 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

was on the wall for us and I began to look at other avenues.
In fact Uniroyal kept us on as their one and only entrepot until we had paid off that £10,000
debt.
Just as soon as that was paid off we received notice to quit and the smarmy chap from
Leeds eventually took over and supplied all their products into our area from Leeds.

The other thing to be remembered here is that by now with Senior Management changes
within their company, Fossitt and Thorne were no longer the power that they had been
when we began the Uniroyal Contract.

The “Radio Telephone” story covers part of the succeeding years, there were not many.

During the next year I worked on setting up a new contract with the T.M.C. (Tyre
Manufacturers Conference) the organisation who handled all “complaint” commercial tyres.

I had managed to negotiate the new contract to provide collection locations nationwide so
that eventually Burton on Trent would be the sole examination centre in the UK.

When the TMC pulled the rug from beneath our feet we were still at Horncastle. (Read
more of this later). The business was liquidated there and in an effort to keep a hold on all
the effort we had put into the new idea, we relocated to Frithville and ECYB (1983).

MORE DRAMA AND DEMISE OF ECYB

Lorries were still travelling the length and breadth
of the UK delivering new tyres for clients in
Liverpool and Brighton. These were tyres made in
Eastern Europe, Israel and India. This was not
going to sufficient to sustain our future though as
they had been introduced to provide back loads
after delivering the original TMC complaints.

Money was tight and I could not sustain
the drain of finance much longer.
Our bank had pressurised us to the extent
that we had to sell our house to pay off our
bank loan.

At this time we had some newish drivers and together, the older ones and new decided
they could make a better job than me. We agreed to change ownership of the business to
them collectively and they would pay us bit by bit for the capital asset in the best lorries on
finance. They were quality vehicles and had good genuine book value in excess of
£25.000 and less than £5.000 of finance left to pay.

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