Haulage loses an enfant terrible
Page 40
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
IN THE DEATH of Eddie Shaw (Commercial Motor, February 11) the road haulage industry has lost a celebrated enfant terrible. Everyone was out of step except our Eddie and he had no hesitation in saying so. Although he wrote under a nom de plume in Motor Transport, the identity of the industry's scourge was an open secret.
He was no literary stylist but his meaning was clear. As the late Philip Edwards, who was editor of Motor Transport, once told me: "His stuff is so gloriously ungrammatical that it would be a shame to correct it."
Eddie scorned those who believed that the sun rose and set over Sheffield, which was near heresy for a Yorkshireman. He had a piquant wit and I have heard him give a talk — naming names with devastating humour — that only Private Eye would have dared to print verbatim. The audience loved it.
"I didn't come into road haulage to run lorries," he used to say. "I came into it to make money." He did, too.