Applegate Van Hire was started by Neil Evans 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, Julie is back in the office as much as she can and not so little Ethan has many visits to the offices and loves coming in to help clean the vans.
Neil is still helping behind the scenes, giving advice and guidance. If he could, he would still be in the office doing the work. At over 80 now, we have to tell him to relax and too old to drive the vans unfortunately.
We 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’. Rusty the Jack Russell loves to sun himself sitting on the chairs but always knows to bark when Bev is on the phone just to get a treat.
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.
We are always open to suggestions so anything you think we can do better, feel free to contact us. We are always open to making things better and easier for customers.
