Huthwaite haulier hands back cheque for £1000

Alan Taylor, the managing director, of B Taylor and Sons Transport, was presented with a cheque for £1,000 by the Warsop and Shirebrook District Rotary Club, towards diesel costs, after his efforts to send eight truck loads of essential items to help the displaced people.

Alan was handed a giant cheque, by the club’s president Geoff Milnes and its international committee chairman, Rob Pasierb at the Rotary’s 52nd Charter anniversary dinner, at the Hostess banqueting suite, Sookhulme, recently.

However Alan, who is a member of the Kirkby Rotary Club, surprised the Warsop and Shirebrook gathering, by saying he didn’t want the money, but wanted the club to give it to another cause.

Geoff Milnes said: “Our club had wanted to recognise the effort Alan had gone to, and we wanted to do something towards helping the Ukraine situation, we help appeals all over the world and locally, we realised for one truck to do a 2,600 mile round trip, that was a lot of fuel.

"Alan donated his trucks, his drivers, his time, so we decided to give him some money towards his fuel costs.

“However, he promptly said he would like to donate the money back to the club, to some other worthy cause, we were not expecting that in any shape or form!

"We now have to decide in a meeting tomorrow (Thursday, April 14) what we will do with it, we had earmarked it for Ukraine.”

Alan said: “I just thought, what am I doing here? It was very kind of them to offer to give me money, but I was thinking my company can soon earn that back, it felt like the right thing to do, to ask them to use the £1,000 for some other worthy cause.

"As a member of Rotary, I know how hard members work raising money, I’ve done it myself shaking a tin in a supermarket, the club worked hard for that money, through the pandemic years, I had to donate it back. I was grateful, I had a lovely meal, I did keep the giant paper cheque as a souvenir though, but gave them the money back!”