JCB is marking its 75th birthday today (23 October) and there is one family with an extra reason to toast the milestone after notching up a collective 600 years of service with the company.
The Boot family started its long association with JCB in 1949 when Bill Boot clocked on for the first time at the company’s factory in Rocester, Staffordshire. In the years that followed, nine of Bill and his wife Lucy’s ten children went on to work at JCB. In total 27 Boot family members – including nine grandsons and three great-grandsons have followed in Bill’s footsteps.
The late Joseph Cyril Bamford founded his business on 23 October 1945 in a lock-up garage in the Staffordshire market town of Uttoxeter.
Today the late Bill Boot’s legacy continues as 11 members of his family still work at JCB – including five of his grandsons and three of his great-grandsons.
Bill’s son Bob, aged 81 and living in Cheadle, Staffordshire, started work in at JCB in 1956 on a temporary contract – and stayed for nearly 44 years. He said: “It is a company that has changed so much, but so many things have stayed the same. It may have factories in all four corners of the world but it is still based on the values that started it up in Staffordshire 75 years ago.”
Bill’s grandson Gary Boot, of Uttoxeter, 58, of who retired in September, said his family were very proud of their JCB links. Gary, who started working for JCB in 1986, said: “I always wanted to join from an early age. My dad, Dereck, would come home and tell us stories of the company and Mr JCB and that sparked my interest. I’ve made so many great friends and have so many memories of the place.”
Gary’s identical twin brothers Andy and Steven both work at the World HQ in Rocester.
The fourth generation of Boots working at JCB is made up of great-grandsons, brothers Shaun and Daniel Boot and their second cousin Leigh Boot. Shaun, of Denstone, who has worked for JCB for 20 years, said: “Knowing that dad, grandad and great grandad all worked here really does make me sit back and think. I’m really not sure what our family would have done for a living if it wasn’t for JCB. I have a six-year-old daughter and my brother Daniel has a six-year-old son. So, you never know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to follow in the family tradition.”
JCB was founded on the same day as JCB’s chairman Anthony Bamford, now Lord Bamford, was born. The company’s first product was a hydraulic tipping trailer made out of war time scrap. Today the company says it manufactures more than 300 different machines including the world’s first electric mini excavator. JCB has 22 factories around the world, 11 in the UK and others in India, the USA, Brazil and China.
