Co-founder of Stagecoach; Born 1943; Died December 5, 2007.
Robin Gloag, who has died aged 64 in a car accident near Inchture, Perthshire, was a co-founder of the early Stagecoach empire. Unable to act with the business drive of his famous wife, Ann (née Souter), and her younger brother, Brian, he left the firm. Divorce followed and he then made his living running buses from a garage in Erroll.
Robin Nicol Gloag was a Perthshire man right through to an ancient surname first recorded in Perth in 1565. Brought up in a council house in the Fair City, he initially worked as manager at a petrol station, meeting his future wife Ann when she, a nurse, helped treat him for a knee injury in Bridge of Earn hospital. They married in 1965 when he was 22, and had a son and daughter.
But early married life proved a financial struggle, and a venture into buses came almost by accident. To make ends meet, they founded a caravan hire business as a sideline, also spending £650 on a second-hand bus. In a stroke of fortune, a local construction company in the Carse of Gowrie had the bus hired to transport workers to a building site, and a profitable business was born.
Both felt their lack of business experience, and Robin's brother-in-law, Brian, a chartered accountant, was brought on board to aid the struggling firm. Then in 1980 came two enormous slices of luck - the Souters' father, a bus driver, contributed £12,000 of redundancy money, and, on October 9, Margaret Thatcher's government deregulated the bus industry to the point where any operator could run bus services over distances of more than 30 miles.
Two days later, Gloag drove the first Gloagtrotter service from Dundee to London, a 500-mile journey whose fare undercut rivals by almost half. He also doubled as maintenance man, with Ann and her mother handling long-distance catering of tea and sandwiches, while Brian took the bookings.
Tory legislation and two rail strikes did nothing but bless the business. Renamed Stagecoach, the company began to run a fleet of bright orange double-decker buses on express services from Perth to Edinburgh. Huge expansion came in 1985 through further bus deregulation and small bus companies were bought up all over the UK. Those who decided not to sell were simply "driven off the road" through a policy of undercutting fares.
In 1983, after repeated clashes, Gloag was paid off with £8000 redundancy and two buses. His marriage to Ann had been in trouble for some time and divorce followed.
He set up a rival firm called Highwayman, cutting his fares by 10p to attract his former wife's customers. She slashed hers by 50p, he followed suit, she halved the fare, then stopped charging altogether. Highwayman went bust, and Stagecoach snapped it up.
Gloag lost contact with his family, and his life was further devastated when in 1999 his son committed suicide.
The manner in which he operated his coach-hire business caused several confrontations in recent years with traffic commissioners over safety standards. Last year's tally included suspension of two buses for faults that included defective brakes.
He is survived by his second wife, Shirley, and by his daughter with Ann. By GORDON CASELY
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