Two loyal employees put their feet up after over 100 years of combined service at Glasswells.
Fred Raison and Ted Crouch both worked for Glasswells Removals; they have seen many changes over the years as the company has grown, expanded and become a household name across East Anglia. |
It was back in 1956 when Ted Crouch joined the company as Warehouse Man, the year when the brand new 10,000 sq ft warehouse was opened in Tollgate Lane. Ted was responsible for checking deliveries and stocks of furniture that supported the many Glasswells furnishings stores throughout the region. At this time much of the stock was stored at the Tollgate warehouse, however the company also had several smaller warehouses located around the town, Ted cycled from one to another when needed, whatever the weather. He also helped to set up the showroom at the Corn Exchange in 1957, a great centre piece with over 80 foot of window display area, it attracted hundreds of visitors every week and played a large part in contributing to the Glasswells of today.
Fred joined the company some 39 years ago as a removals man based at the Tollgate premises. After a number of years there was a vacancy for a management position in the office, Fred gave up the manual work to oversee the day-to-day office duties and soon progressed to the senior post of manager of warehouse deliveries and removals, managing the entire removals operations and the fleet of furniture delivery vehicles.
1999 saw the company take a huge leap forward with the opening of their brand new state-of-the-art storage and distribution centre in Kempson Way, Bury St. Edmunds, centralising Glasswells entire removals and storage operations. Fred played a large role with preparing Glasswells’ own move to the outskirts of the town, as you would expect everything ran extremely smoothly and to plan. Ted resumed his Warehouse Man duties however on a much larger scale.
Over the years Fred and Ted have become good friends and regularly share stories of old gathered from their years of working together. During the last few years they reduced their working hours to part-time, however have now both decided to call it a day and have a rest after their combined century of working for the progressive firm.
Paul Glasswell comments, “Both Ted & Fred have been valuable employees for Glasswells. Fred has helped to enhance the reputation of our removals business tremendously, with the traditional one-to-one customer contact that we have become famous for and helping customers to benefit from the reliable, honest and competitive service we deliver. Whilst Ted’s behind the scenes role helped everything to run as smoothly as possible. I would like to thank them for their hard work and loyalty and wish them long and happy retirements.”
