Our History

If there’s one thing we’ve always had at A1, it’s a can-do attitude. Here, you can see Mick and Russell Pike building sheds for the pigs.

Just over 10 years later, and the Pikes’ lives had been transformed. Here’s A1’s first car transporter and — in the background — the office that we still use today.

Here’s Terry Coke, one of A1’s first employees and still a regular today. He built the yard and used it to crush cars for us. In the background, the first racks for car spares.

Our first real car crusher — the key to upscaling the business. Still, that didn’t stop Terry sticking with tried and tested methods — he crushed the cars by driving over them in the digger!

We got our first skip lorry this year, and set about collecting scrap metal and household waste. And, we launched the tyre department — great for our fleet, and for customers needing part-worn tyres.

Russell, Jean and Dave Martin — one of A1’s first employees — outside our first ever office.

Banger racing: an A1 passion from the 80s that continues today! Here’s Terry with one of the first bangers to come out of the yard.

1985 saw the purchase of a brand new skip lorry this year — the first new vehicle A1 ever owned!

Time for new offices, and our first weigh bridge, bought second hand for £2,000. Now we had room for more staff, and our customers could come in and weigh their own scrap metal. 

A1 Wokingham Wet Waste was born in 1990 with the purchase of our first tanker. Russell and the team began clearing our drains and effluent tanks.

My, how we’ve grown! Here’s the yard in 2002 with depollution rigs in full force, and our new Colmar bailer — an £80,000 investment — at the bottom of the yard. Toilets are also starting to appear — our baby Loo Hire division!

A1 Loo Hire’s official launch. We welcomed our Director, Clive Owen, who’d previously been MD for one of our Wet Waste clients. He and Russell orchestrated our expansion from Wet Waste to Loo Hire.

We installed new racks in the car spares department — an £120,000 investment that allowed us to safely store over 500 cars. And at the bottom of the yard, our depollution shed, where processed large numbers of vehicles from contracts with police services across the south east.

By 2017, demand for our car recycling services was soaring — we invested over £2 million in a new crusher to increase capacity — and our Loo Hire division had taken over a large swathe of the yard. By this point, we’d achieved a number of ISO accreditations, and health and safety had become top priority, as you’ll see from the layout: each department is expertly organised and divided to keep staff and customers safe.

During the outbreak of Covid 19, our Wet Waste and Loo Hire divisions were fortunate enough to gain the contract of supplying portable toilet hire and waste management to the Covid Testing Centres across the UK.

A1 Loo Hire of the A1 Group completed the acquisition of Convenient Hire, based in Waterlooville, Portsmouth. This launched the 5th depot for A1 Loo Hire and welcomed 7 new staff to the group.

A1 Group Transport was officially launched in 2021, running 3 HIABS located in South Wales which specialises in transporting site accommodation around the UK.

A1 Loo Hire have been able to expand our coverage to the East of England, with the opening of our 6th depot located in Grays, Essex.