Applegate Van Hire was started by Neil back in 1979 when he was a part time Ambulance and Fireman. He wanted to start being his own boss.
It started off with only a couple of vans in Royston.
After a few years, the van hire was a side business to his other business of Furniture Removal. He found this to be busier and had the company for many years until he sold up the removals to retire in 1995.
After finding retirement was not for him, Neil started working part time in Sainsburys transport. While working here he decided to get Applegate Van Hire up and running to be his own boss again
So in 2000, more vans were bought and this time starting again in a busier Huntingdon which quickly lead to a branch in St Neots and of course his home town of Royston. Having the removal history behind him, helped give customer his expertise on their requirements but without doing the heavy lifting himself.
In 2013 he finally gave into his pestering daughter to come on board and help in the office. Julie started and quickly (to Neil’s annoyance) started to get the company a bit more modern and efficient.
Then in 2016 Julies partner John came on board and Neil retired again – or tried. John has helped greatly in the vans appearance, basic maintenance and repair.
2018 saw another change with Julie and John having their son which allowed more staff to help come on board to help.
So currently we are still running as a family, with Neil sometimes helping at the Royston branch. Julie is back in the office as much as she can and Ethan has many visits to the offices and loves coming in to help clean the vans.
We now have Bev in the office taking all your lovely calls and trying to squeeze all the bookings in as she ‘doesn’t like to let anyone down’ and then we have Chris cleaning the vans to a high standard and now with Covid to an even higher standard.
We pride ourselves being a small independent company, friendly and joking but serious about our work.
If you are unfortunate to get John onto the subject of Jags, your collection time may be a lot longer.
