29.04.2024

Richard Collett 1942-2024

We have received the sad news that Richard Collett, the chairman of UK heavy moving and rigging specialists Collett & Sons has died.

He passed away at Airedale Hospital on the 9th of February, having suffered with prostate cancer since 2002, he was 81.

Richard Collett was born on a farm in Keighley, West Yorkshire on the 26th of August 1942, the seventh of nine children of Richard and Margery Collett. His father, also Richard, was a farmer who had started a milk collection business in 1928, buying his first truck in 1933. As soon as he was able, young Richard was expected to work on the farm, carrying out a variety of jobs from helping with milking to going out with the truck drivers collecting milk from local farms and delivering it to the dairy.

In 1960 he married Patricia, with the two going on to have five sons. Richard, David, Lincoln, Mark and Michael. In 1962 he moved to a derelict farm in Halifax, where he opened a new milk collecting operation as well as farming.

In 1964 he and his father established R Collett and Son, initially as a milk collection business, but it also won an animal feed delivery contract for West Cumberland Farmers building a fleet of around eight used trucks. Collett did all the wagon services and repairs himself and in 1975 was joined by his eldest son Richard who became a mechanic after leaving school.

In 1975 he formed R. Collett & Sons (Transport) to move into heavy haulage work, with idea that all five sons would join the business. He bought his first low loader, a small second hand single axle Crane Fruehauf trailer in 1976 and the business began to take off. In 1985 he bought a yard in Keighley, having outgrown the farm, and in 1996 consolidated both locations into a new yard in Pellon, Halifax, where the company is still based.

Whilst his formal education was brief and continually interrupted, his enthusiasm for hard work coupled with the fact that he was bright, ambitious and had an excellent sense of judgement, more than compensated for his poor reading and writing skills.

He was a true character who didn’t suffer fools and was outspoken, but fair. As his sons and grandchildren left school, they joined the company contributing to the business which increasingly specialised in heavy transport. While he technically retired in his late 70s, he carried on working until the end. He was buried at the Mount Pleasant cemetery in Wainstalls on the 1st of March following a service at the Halifax Minster. His coffin was transported on the back of his 1952 Bedford O type milk wagon.

Collett is based in Halifax with yards in Elland, Bradford, Goole and Grangemouth in Scotland, as well as an office in Dublin, Ireland. The company purchased its first wagon in 1933 and more recently it has added the supply of craneage, along with heavy lift, contract lifts and rigging services to its portfolio.