Stagecoach staff including Lancaster bus driver receive long service awards
Twenty-one dedicated staff who have helped thousands of bus passengers get from A to B have been recognised for their hard work.
Stagecoach Cumbria and North Lancashire held an awards event for its long-serving employees at the Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa, Windermere, on Friday (March 14).
In total 21 awards were given to people working across a variety of roles in the business, recognising between 20 and 45 years of service.
Those receiving the awards have worked for Stagecoach Cumbria and North Lancashire for a combined total of 562 years.
Among them were Andrew Forshaw who worked as a bus driver for over 30 years after a chance sighting set him on the path to a career with Stagecoach.
"I lived in Lancaster, and I was driving my car one day, and I saw this advert on the back of what was then Stagecoach Ribble - Stagecoach had just taken over Ribble buses - and it said, Do you want to drive this bus?
"I rang up and three weeks later I got an interview and I got a start date.
"To get on the buses in those days, it was dead men's shoes, if you will. That's why it took so long - you had to wait for somebody to leave.
"I went to Preston for my training and I've been with Stagecoach ever since."
Andrew, 58, from Winmarleigh, near Garstang, had worked in farming before that and it was a chance to swap one form of transport for another, and deal with people not animals.
"The appeal was to interact with people, because all I ever did before that was drive tractors and milk cows.
“Coming from a farming background, and then moving into the big city and becoming a bus driver, it was a bit of a challenge at first; very demanding, when you're out on your own for the first time, and you go to the university with two to three hundred students waiting for buses.
"But I managed it, and I've never looked back. They've looked after me."
His impeccable record, which last year saw him presented with an award for 25 years of safe driving, led to him being 'loaned out' to Stagecoach depots around the country.
"When the schools and the university were out on summer vacation, we were a bit overstaffed, so they'd have had a ring round and see which depots were short, and then they'd ask you if you'd like to go. And I did that for quite a lot of years.
"I went to other Stagecoach areas like Devon, Exeter, Cheltenham and Gloucester. I went to London. That was a completely different story, because that is eye opening to drive a bus around London.
"I was reliable, never let them down, and took on a new challenge of working in different cities. And I learned a lot about how different Stagecoach companies work.
"I'm just thankful for the way I've been treated and the way I've been recognised.
"You make the job how you make it. And at the end of the day I've made it my job."