On Sunday 30 August, more than 80 trucks pulled out of Postwick Park and Ride with 88 children up in the cabs. In and among all the chrome and horn blowing were the shirts we’d embroidered for East Coast Truckers, which is about as good a way as our stitching could spend a bank holiday.
Thirty-nine convoys and counting
The Children’s Convoy is one of those events the whole region plans its bank holiday around. It started back in 1986, when a group of East Anglian truckers began working with special schools to give children a ride in a truck cab. The charity was registered in 2000 and now has more than 100 members, all of them volunteers.
This year, the convoy left Postwick at 9.45am and rolled into Pleasurewood Hills in Lowestoft by about half eleven. With a police escort clearing the way through junctions and red lights. After an afternoon on the rides, the trucks came home along Great Yarmouth’s Golden Mile at around 6pm, past a stage and trailer outside Joyland and thousands of people packed into laybys, on roundabouts and over bridges to wave them through. Convoy manager Trevor Howlett said the crowds made it feel “really special for the children”.
Eighty-eight of them got the best seat in the house, high up in a cab, looking down at a county that had turned out to cheer.
What ESP embroidered
ESP stitched the shirts the team wore on the day. Across the back, in East Coast Truckers blue: ECTC 39th Children’s Convoy. On the chest, the charity’s own logo, complete with truck, children hanging off the side of it and a strapline in lettering small enough to make a digitiser wince. Around that, the sponsors who help keep the day on the road, Pleasurewood Hills among them.
Multi-logo work like this is fiddly in the best way. Every logo becomes its own stitch file before anything goes near a garment, with thread colours matched and stitch order planned, and then each one has to sit cleanly on a crisp white shirt without puckering or losing the detail that makes it recognisable. Get it right and nobody notices. That’s rather the point. What people see is a team that looks like a team, and a row of sponsors getting the credit they’ve earned.
The convoy is only part of it
Every shirt was embroidered ethically, in-house at ESP, and we’re proud to have had a hand in the day. The convoy is the headline, but East Coast Truckers keep going all year round with days out, circus trips, Christmas parties and week-long stays for children and their families at the charity’s two holiday homes in East Anglia. All of it run by volunteers, and all of it paid for by buckets, raffles and people who pull over to give what they can.
If you want to support them, the charity’s donation page is the place to start.
Embroidery, printing and everything in between
Charity convoys are a favourite here, but the day job looks much the same for everyone else. Our Norwich studio does custom embroidery and screen printing for charities, clubs, events and businesses across Norfolk and well beyond: polo shirts and workwear for teams, caps and hoodies for supporters, and custom branded merchandise that gets worn long after the event that prompted it.
Congratulations to everyone who made the 39th happen. Number 40 next year, and we’ll be somewhere on the kerb with everyone else.