JCB were founded on 23 October 1945 by the late Joseph Cyril Bamford in a tiny lock-up garage in the Staffordshire market town of Uttoxeter. It was the same day that his son Anthony, now Lord Bamford, was born, and as Mr Bamford once remarked 'being presented with a son tended to concentrate the mind, and when you were starting at the bottom, there was only one way to go and that was up'. The foundation for the growth that was to follow was the manufacture of a tipping trailer made out of war-time scrap and which today stands proudly in the showroom of JCB's World HQ. It was produced in Mr Bamford's garage and sold for £45 at the town's market. The buyer's old cart, which was taken in part-exchange, was refurbished by Mr Bamford and sold for another £45. By 1947 the company was expanding and moved a few miles down the road to a stable block at Crakemarsh Hall, which was owned by Julia Cavendish, a survivor of the Titanic disaster. At this time JCB also took on their first-ever full-time employee, Arthur Harrison, who became foreman.
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