Jonathan Welch speaks to Stagecoach Regional Director Robert Andrew, who was given a special lifetime contribution award at the 2020 Scottish Transport Awards for his long service to the industry and to Stagecoach
At the Scottish Transport Awards, held online and presented virtually this year, Robert Andrew was presented with a special award to acknowledge his lifetime contribution to transport in Scotland during his 35-year-long career. In-keeping with the online nature of the Awards, CBW joined Robert via Microsoft Teams for a chat about his extensive career, his role as Stagecoach’s longest-serving regional director, and his plans for his not-quite-retirement.
I started off by asking Robert how he got into the transport industry. “I got interested in transport way back when I was young. I was brought up on the West Coast in Fort William, and my father was a parish Minister. He became involved in the local council, and, long before deregulation abolished road service licensing, tried to organise a service to Glasgow with the local Scottish Bus Group subsidiary, going south in the morning and returning in the evening. He had quite a battle with SPT to get a licence to operate it.”
Early start
“As a student, I worked for what was then Midland Scottish during the summer in its head office. I worked in the schedules department while I was at university, then after I graduated I applied to the fledgeling Kelvin Scottish. I joined in 1985, appointed by another well-known name, John Elliott. I was with Kelvin for three years, working mainly at the head office but also at the depots. After that, I moved on to Western Scottish, where I took on the role of Area Manager, which was similar to what we would call an Operations Manager today, initially at Stranraer then at Dumfries.”
His progression through the ranks at the nationalised Scottish Bus Group placed Robert in good stead when it came to moving over to the new, more dynamic private sector. “In 1992, I saw an advertisement for a role at Stagecoach in Inverness, which brought me back to the Highlands. At the time, Stagecoach was still a relatively young company which had bought a number of businesses. In Inverness, they bought Inverness Traction and taken a lot of work on from Highland Scottish Omnibuses, and were trying to merge the two cultures. They were two different extremes. There had been a very militant trade union at Inverness with Highland, and a vast array of people from Traction.
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