Founder of the haulage business that carried his name and grew into a multimillion-pound concern

His was the name that adorned a thousand lorries, so familiar on the motorways of Britain that families would while away long journeys by counting them and recording their individual names – each was emblazoned with a woman’s name. Yet Eddie Stobart, who has died aged 95, owned just eight trucks when he handed over the Cumbria-based business in the 1970s to his son Edward to run, concentrating instead on his agricultural interests and his active religious faith.

Edward would build Eddie Stobart Ltd into a trucking business that at one point had more than 2,000 lorries and was eventually sold for £280m. He insisted on having his father’s name (not his own) painted on the side of the vehicles as the company built up its reputation for well-maintained, high-quality vehicles, with uniformed drivers, and benefited from the huge growth in road haulage and moving goods by road rather than rail.