JCB restores 56-year-old backhoe to former glory

Lincolnshire (UK)-based plant hire and road haulage firm, Eric Carnaby & Son, has been a JCB customer since 1959, having bought more than 150 JCB machines over six decades.

To say thank you for the company’s loyalty, as well as to celebrate JCB’s upcoming 75th anniversary, JCB has decided to restore the Carnaby family’s cherished 1964 JCB 1 backhoe to its former glory.

The project was kept a closely guarded secret until George Bamford – grandson of JCB founder Joseph Cyril Bamford– sprung a surprise visit to Eric Carnaby & Son’s base in Immingham, near Grimsby, to collect the machine.

Now, six months later, the backhoe has been handed back to its owners after a team at JCB’s World HQ in Rocester, Staffordshire spent hundreds of hours restoring it.

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Eric Carnaby & Son Director, Roland Carnaby Junior, said he and his family are over the moon with the restoration.

“Our JCB 1 is precious to us and we’ve been meaning to restore it for some time, but you know how it is – a business to run, and all that!”

“It has been amazing to see an old machine brought back to life by the JCB team,” said George Bamford.

“It looks just as it would have done on the day it came off the production line in 1964.”

The plant hire firm was founded by Eric Carnaby in 1946 and is now run by father-and-son team Roland Carnaby Senior and Roland Carnaby Junior.

The company’s first JCB purchase was a JCB 4 backhoe in 1959 and it was the machine which formed the backbone of the Eric Carnaby & Son fleet for many years to come – with up to 12 in operation during the 1970s and 1980s.

The company’s most recent purchase was the latest X Series excavator. Today, 95 per cent of its fleet consists of JCB equipment.

JCB will mark its 75th birthday on October 23, 2020.