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Fred Hope
• "Fearless" is the description which his friends have given Fred Hope and, in fact. in recent years it has almost become part of his name. When one talks of Fred Hope's friends, this takes in almost everyone who meets him. It would be extremely difficult to dislike this amiable inventor from London.
Fred, who started life as a dustcart driver and doesn't mind who knows it, is probably best known for his now world famous anti-jack-knife device. This equipment has now been patented all over the free world with the exception of Japan.
For the free world is Fred's territory and even as you read this he will just have returned from Alaska. At 45 years of age. he has been all over the non-Communist world on business. A remarkable achievement —he only began his engineering business in 1963. Prior to that, he was running a mixed fleet of 35 vehicles, having served during the war in the RASC.
Just as some businesses profess to possess the true distribution concept, so does Fred Hope claim to have the true production concept, that is the idea, the manufacture, and the selling. He has two salesmen and 12 other employees, and depends largely on sub-contractors for most of his parts. However, despite his inventive turn of mind, Fred is no engineer; he says he became an inventor because he suffered from engineers.
In his spare time he enjoys browsing through books of quotations and his favourite quote is "A perfectionist takes infinite pains and often gives them to other people." The anti-jack-knife device was the first but it is not the only Fred Hope invention and even now he is almost ready to market what he describes as a simple yet revolutionary idea. The first place you are likely to read about the latest Hope invention is CM. Who said so? Fred Hope did— and among his other many qualities is that of being a man of his word.
With his wife and two sons, he lives in a small farm in Chobham. He has a great love for animals and when I asked him what he thought of the Government, he replied with a mischievous twinkle in his eye: "It's all right—they subsidize my pets."
Probably the most remarkable thing about this most remarkable man, who fears neither physical danger nor business competitors, is that he recently reversed the takeover trend by buying out his shareholders. I.S.