Once you just shoved all the gear in the back of the Transit, but things have changed. Antony Freeman talks to Britain's Scott of the Artic, Edwin Shirley

In the years since the rock and roll circus grew up, left home and took to the highways of the world, the name of Edwin Shirley Trucking has become legendary.

The company — motto 'You Rock, We Roll' — was born early in 1974, although to many people in the music business it must seem that Edwin Shirley has been around since touring began. Everywhere that bands go these days the purple and yellow, 40-foot long Edwin Shirley logo can be seen parked outside rock venues with artics, drivers and omnipotence attached.

From the traditional small beginnings EST has grown rapidly and now has nearly 30 trailers to its name, enough Volvo tractor units to start a dealership, a growing fleet of three-tonners, a luxurious £65 000 crew bus, a new five acre depot in East London and a list of customers which reads like a Who's Who of rock and roll.

Edwin Shirley can often be seen trucking up to a dozen major tours simultaneously in the UK and Europe, with an average of three or four trucks being used on each tour.

The story of this remarkable organisation begins in 1966. Edwin Shirley, son of a Kent farmer, has spent three years studying at Cambridge University and has developed an interest in the theatre. After graduating with a degree in modern languages he becomes involved with theatre companies in London and works, among other things, in theatrical lighting.

While working for the ESP Lighting Company he and future partner Roy Lamb find themselves on the 1970 Rolling Stones European tour. The idea of rock bands taking lighting rigs around on tour with them is still a new one; the Stones are partly responsible for its catching on. Edwin and Roy work very hard because they want the contract for the next Stones tour, which they get. ESP gains a reputation as a good rock lighting company.

As they sweat on this and subsequent tours, Edwin and Roy soon realise how badly organised and inefficient are the average tour transport arrangements of the day. Trucking has not quite kept up with the progress from a drum kit, two or three AC30s, guitars and a few mic stands which all had to be shoved into the back of an old Transit, to the amount of stage gear and PA which bands are now starting to use in the late Sixties. The addition of large, bulky lighting rigs is clearly going to be the last straw on the already inadequate system of do-it-yourself three-ton trucks. Brain cells start ticking.

'In those days you had to take care of your own transport, as small bands do today,' recalls Edwin. 'You went and rented a three-tonner or two and did it all yourself — driving, unloading, humping, setting up, reloading, all the heavy work. As equipment got bigger and the work got harder crews drove themselves into the ground. Eventually the logistics got out of hand, with flocks of three-tonners needed to do a tour, and it was becoming obvious that artics were going to be needed.'

In the summer of 1973 Edwin and Roy decided that rock 'n' roll trucking was becoming a career of its own and they formed the embryonic Edwin Shirley Trucking Company. 'We didn't realise it at the time, but we had stumbled on something for which there was great demand,' says Edwin. 'It seems that no-one else had thought of the idea.' So with a few hired trucks EST (the name was a pun on ESP Lighting) hit the road as a sideline to ESP's lighting hire activities.

Edwin and Roy had made plenty of contacts within the music world and almost immediately won the contract to provide transport for the 1973 Santana tour, thereby confirming their theory that organised trucking for major rock tours was overdue. Then came the 1974 Genesis tour. Genesis had been using an old three-tonner which had broken down (Edwin Shirley promptly bought and repaired it) and EST got the contract for that tour as well. They have transported every Genesis tour since. The first Genesis tour used one 34-foot artic trailer; the most recent, last summer, took 11 40-foot trailers and the crew bus. 'In a way Edwin Shirley Trucking and Genesis have grown up together, which is nice,' says Edwin.

And so it was that Edwin Shirley Trucking began. Edwin and Roy kept up their lighting hire work for a couple more years ('We kept saying: Just one more tour') but eventually decided that they couldn't do both things at the same time and so concentrated on the trucking. They were joined by a third partner, Del Roll, who had been Uriah Heep's tour manager for 10 years. Edwin and Roy met Del while doing lighting for Heep. (Heep didn't hold any grudges about the poaching; they and EST are still the best of friends.)

Based at first on the dairy farm owned by Edwin's family near Cranbrook in Kent, the growing fleet of Volvo units and trailers, expanding workshops and storage space soon outgrew the farm buildings and narrow local lanes. A quarter-acre site was found near the Thames at Battersea in south London but that soon became too small as well. So early this year Edwin Shirley Trucking moved to a new home at Crows Road, West Ham, London.

After the previous two sites, Crows Road is enormous. It's a long-abandoned transport depot which used to belong to the neighbouring chemical works (whose sulphurous fumes are the main ingredient of the local atmosphere) and it resembles an unwanted film set from a World War Two movie, with what look like old hangars, strips of runway, dispersals bays and air raid shelters dotted around everywhere. The site has the Dante-ish chemical works to the north, railway lines along two sides and a large Post Office depot to the south. It has a typical East London atmosphere of bleakness and desolation but it does the job.

Crows Road is only five minutes from the Blackwall Tunnel so access is good, especially for Dover and the Channel ports. The new site does have a couple of little drawbacks, however... like the fact that the only way in is a narrow road with a hairpin bend in it. Just after the hairpin bend there is a right-angle bend, after which the road goes under two railway bridges which are about six inches too low to get some Volvo-powered artic trailers underneath. So those trailers have to be dropped off outside in the access road, have their legs lowered a bit and then get collected by a small, British Rail-type tractor unit. By means of such deviousness the trucks just make it into the depot, but it's a close thing. There is talk of having a new access road built; trouble is, there ain't nowhere else to put one...

'People thought we were mad when we moved in here,' mused Edwin as he showed me around the depot one pleasant Spring afternoon. 'But it's a long-term thing. It will all work out in time.' I looked at the derelict sheds we were passing at the time and marvelled at his confidence. But since that same confidence had made EST what it is now, there seemed no reason to doubt that it would.

Edwin intends to make full use of the sheds and outbuildings, half of which were still in good condition when EST arrived on the site, although some of the buildings were crumbling (with the assistance of the local juvenile population and the acid rain) and one or two looked as if they were on their way to meet the great bricklayer in the sky.

Workshops and service bays for the trucks and trailers have already been installed and equipped. These occupy less than a fifth of the available covered space and other buildings are being renovated, one at a time, to be used for storage. The offices have been installed in rejuvenated Nissen huts and a mess room for drivers is being planned for a remaining empty hut.

Storage is one of the sidelines which developed at the farm in Kent four or five years ago. Now that EST has so much warehouse space — around 50 000 square feet of it — Edwin is planning to expand this sideline. The farm is already crammed full of old theatrical props and scenery and rock 'n' roll relics which get put into store when tours have finished and are sometimes forgotten.

'The farm is like a museum of rock 'n' roll,' says Edwin ruefully. 'We are storing stuff there from tours going back to the 60s. We've even got two or three very large, 20-foot high inflating cocks from the Stones tour if anyone wants them... We find things get left with us for 10 or 15 years. Then eventually they're just abandoned and left to rot and we don't get paid for storing them. We built the workshops at the farm from defunct Jumping Jack lighting trusses... We've still got 30-foot diameter crowns lying around from two Queen tours; all sorts of stuff like that.'

The Cranbrook Operatic and Dramatic Society (known to its supporters as CODS) must be the best-equipped local amateur dramatic society in the country; they apparently end up with all the old, unwanted props, scenery and costumes that have been mouldering at the farm.

The buildings at Crows Road are already filling up with theatrical sets, props and scenery from, among others, The English National Opera and the London Festival Ballet. It needed only the merest whisper of the word 'storage' for a flood of defunct but expensive theatrical lumber to start pouring in. The same applies to band equipment, except that it is not likely to be unwanted after just one tour. Touring bands have gigantic amounts of equipment to store and service every time they come off the road and often have nowhere to put it.

Further storage space will soon be supplied by the acquisition of some old cargo containers which will be leased out as 'mini warehouses'.

And so to the activity which has made Edwin Shirley's name known throughout the world (he promises that his partners, Del and Roy, are not jealous about it) - trucking rock bands around the land. At this very minute, all over the UK and Europe, great numbers of musical articulated lorries will be thundering up and down motorways and autobahns or unloading tons of equipment into theatres and stadia or loading it back out again. And most of them will have 'Edwin Shirley Trucking' writ in big yellow letters on the sides, Edwin Shirley drivers in the cabs and Edwin Shirley organisation making the whole lot go.

Volvo F88, F89 and F12 tractor units have been found to be the most reliable and hard-working machines for rock touring and Shirley now uses nothing else. Gigs are often hundreds of miles apart, especially in Europe, and the motive power has to be able to stand up to long, fast journeys, perhaps for months at a time, without expiring or needing frequent and expensive overhauls. Edwin reckons he gets his money's worth out of the £25 000 Volvos.

But 25 grand is peanuts compared to the amount spent on the famous crew bus. The recently-acquired Volvo bus is something of which Edwin is justifiably proud; if lavish opulence is an indicator of a company's prosperity then EST must be on the road to millionairehood. The bus is, in effect, a mobile hotel. It was built over a period of two years to Edwin Shirley's specifications, at a cost of £65 000. A brother to it, which Edwin hopes will be commissioned soon, will cost around £85 000.

Not surprisingly the bus is in great demand and is on the road for months at a time. It has air suspension, bunks for 15 people, reclining seats, air conditioning, double glazing, shower, loo, wash basin, microwave oven, video and tape machines and tapes. It can even come with a hostess to look after such time-consuming details as cooking, laundry and shopping for the crew. The point of the bus, as Edwin explains, is to keep the crew in good condition between gigs and to make sure they can rest or sleep on long drives or when there is no hotel. Crews who have the use of the bus must be better cared for on the road than some bands.

EST owns a dozen or so Volvo units, painted in the company colours and instantly recognisable, and hires more as they are needed. There is a nucleus of around 20 drivers, most of whom are well known to touring bands and their crews. With the Volvos breakdowns don't happen often and neither, touch amp stack, do accidents. But if anything should go wrong with the transport during a tour there is always a back-up truck and driver ready to go to the rescue from Crows Road. The depot is manned 24 hours a day to look after any such mishaps.

As well as the flock of 40-foot artic trailers there are some shorter trailers for 'load and a half' jobs and three-tonners for smaller things, three-tonners being the largest goods vehicles which can be driven on an ordinary licence. To their collection of seven ageing Fords Edwin Shirley are in the process of adding 10 new Saviem three-tonners, having had one on test for a while and found it ideal for rock touring.

The Ford trucks are only meant to be local delivery vehicles and can't stand the stresses of the daily long-distance, highspeed thrashes they have to suffer on rock tours. The Saviems, although a lot more expensive to buy (and therefore to hire) look like being completely reliable and Edwin feels confident that the expense will be justified.

Some of Shirley's drivers eventually buy their own trucks, paint them in the company colours and operate as owner drivers. 'That's something we help people do when they've worked for us for a while,' explains Edwin. 'But we don't take on owner drivers from scratch.'

Surprisingly Edwin doesn't drive himself, although his two partners, Del and Roy, both do and are frequently out on tours, leaving Edwin to mind the shop.

'I always meant to get an HGV licence but I never got round to it; I was always too busy running things. I'm not too bothered, though. There are people who are fanatical about driving trucks and being on the road but I'm not one of them. I don't mind leaving driving to those who live for it.'

There is an endless supply of people wanting to drive for Shirley, but Edwin is pretty selective. 'In this job, personality is more important than excellence at driving,' he says. 'We have unlimited numbers of people wanting to work for us but the job isn't just driving. The driver has got to know what it's all about, what the gear is and what it does... It's not unusual for drivers to have to help set up the gear, especially when schedules are a bit pushed. The best drivers in this trade are ex-roadies who have got themselves a Class 1 HGV licence.'