JCB Restores Vintage Digger For 75th Anniversary

Humber family-owned plant hire firm, Eric Carnaby & Son has been a loyal customer of JCB since 1959, buying over 150 JCB machines in the last six decades, and to celebrate its 75th anniversary, JCB has restored the family’s cherished 1964 JCB 1 backhoe loader.

According to Business Live, the vintage digger had been stood in the barn for years, until the grandson of JCB founder Joseph Bamford CBE, George Bamford, surprised the family with the restoration project during a visit to the company’s base at South Killingholme, near Immingham.

Experts at JCB’s World HQ in Rocester, Staffordshire, spent hundreds of hours lovingly restoring it, before returning it, six months later, back to the plan hire firm.

Eric Carnaby & Son director, Roland Carnaby Junior, said: “My family and I are over the moon with the restoration. Our JCB 1 is precious to us and we’ve been meaning to restore it for some time, but you know how it is – a business to run and all that!”

The company was founded by Eric Carnaby in 1946, and the plant hire and road haulage firm is now run by father-and-son team Roland Carnaby Senior and Roland Carnaby Junior.

The firm’s first JCB purchase was a JCB 4 backhoe in 1959 and it was the JCB backhoe loader which formed the backbone of the fleet for many years to come. The two family-owned businesses have forged a strong link in their combined 61-year trading history, and 95 per cent of the Eric Carnaby & Son fleet now made up of JCB equipment.

George Bamford said: “It has been amazing to see an old machine brought back to life by the JCB team. It looks just as it would have done on the day it came off the production line in 1964.”

JCB marks its 75th birthday on October 23.

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