Keeping the WAGONS ROLLING

There’s gold in them there hills! Katie Jarvis meets the man responsible for the honey-coloured gravel on our driveways

- Katie Jarvis

Moreton Cullimore is MD of the Cullimore Group, a family-owned business known throughout the region for its quarrying, haulage and concrete activities. Many a Cotswold drive has been shingled thanks to its aggregates.

It’s a progressive company that’s also proud of its roots. The Cullimores have a farming history in the Stroud area stretching back 400 years. It was in the 1920s that the original Moreton – Moreton’s grandfather – invested in a Ford Model T truck to replace his horse-drawn cart. When neighbouring farmers saw how quickly it enabled him to get milk and livestock to market, the requests (Could he take a few pigs here? A sheep there?) came thick and fast. Within 10 years, Moreton had set himself up as a haulier.

More than 90 years later, the Cullimore Group has 60 vehicles on the roads of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Avon and Somerset, and employs around 100 people.

The current crisis has not proved easy for businesses. “But if there is any positive to come out of this horrible pandemic, it’s that the penny has dropped about the importance of trucks and their drivers,” Moreton says.

Where do you live and why?

I separate my time between Cheltenham and an old family home on the side of a quarry of ours, which we’ve restored to habitat, nature and lakes. My mum grew up in Charlton Kings, so I’ve always had an affinity with Cheltenham. I moved there when I was doing an MA in sports development at the University of Gloucestershire, and I’ve kind of stayed.