Page 29 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

FIRESTONE THE FINAL CURTAIN
By 1973, Fred, my Lincoln Manager and long time mentor, had been demoted and moved
sideways in Management changes after 25 years loyal service.

We had lost our best single account in Lincolnshire when London Managers upset Harry
Thorne the Managing Director of Fossitt and Thorne the largest independent tyre dealers
in the East Midlands.

He and his managers were so incensed with the cavalier way they were treated by
London, that they sent every Firestone tyre in their entire stock back from their 14
branches for credit and did not buy another Firestone tyre for six months.
This destroyed my sales figures and earnings and forced me further down the line of
developing our own tyre transport business.

I had begun to provide the faulty tyre collection service within my own area and actually
hitched a trailer onto the back of my company car!

News eventually got back to my 'new' boss Henry who had been the salesman in North
Lincs. under Fred at the time I joined the company.

I travelled to Firestone Leicester one Saturday morning and we had a serious talk.

To be very fair he did request that I stay with Firestone as I had a good area and ran it
well. But I could see things were not going to get any better under the new American
managers and told him I would be leaving.

In fact within two years, Henry himself had left to set up a retail tyre shop in Grimsby and
Firestone closed down both their factories in the UK.

More of this later in the book.
Ruth and I found the Volkswagen pick up to collect tyres with and a small BMC lorry with 3
litre petrol engine to deliver all the tyres to the examination centre in Burton on Trent.

We built a long single axle trailer to go behind the little lorry and the business began.

Ruth was working at the new Pilgrim hospital at this time and our main wage earner. I had
to get home each day to make sure daughter Helen was met off the school bus that took
her back and forth to the junior school in nearby Carrington.

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