BACK TO ITS ROOTS
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In 1963, James Christopher Balls (known to all as Jim) bought a brand new JCB 3 machine for £2,700, following employment as a plant operative with contractor Bowmer & Kirkland. "Buying my own machine and doing it myself seemed to be the logical thing to do. At the time, it was hired out for 18 shillings (90 pence) an hour, but I later held out for a full pound!" he muses. By 1965, he had added a second excavator and his first employed operator.
The company moved to larger premises in 1978, and by 1983 had bought the old Midland Railway yard at Ambergate which now houses the firm's HQ, as well as a growing collection of vintage plant and lorries. Today. each truck in the JC Balls fleet carries the name of a Midland loco.
The brothers tell the story of what was known as the extension to the "London-Yorkshire Motorway"; Ihe Ml's construction in 1965. "At the time. Wimpey was running AEC Mammoth Majors from the quarry at Wirksworth to the Ml. The lads on that job managed seven loads a day, every day. But in the heady digital tachograph days of 2010, we can only manage six loads (at a push), with faster, more efficient plant, on much better roads and with brand new, state-of-the-art vehicles!"