UK - Eric Gibbins, the founder of Truck & Bus Builder, passed away peacefully in the early hours of Sunday, August 24, 2025 at the age of 95. He is survived by his four children: Penny, Jim, Sally and Paddy, eleven grandchildren, and one great granddaughter.

Described as, “one of the grandfathers of British commercial vehicle journalism”, Eric was a pioneer and early influencer in his field. Throughout his career, at Motor Transport, Bus and Coach, Commercial Vehicles, Transport & Distribution Press and Truck & Bus Builder, he instituted and maintained a level of technical accuracy, clear concise communication, and a global breadth of focus that created a benchmark for his peers and competitors alike.

Born on December 27, 1929, he spent his childhood in London, where his father, Percy Gibbins, ran the tram and trolley-bus network in Walthamstow and then in south London, before taking charge of London’s red buses in the early 1950s.

His childhood experiences working with his father on the trams and buses inspired an abiding interest in motor vehicles. On graduating from King’s College School, Wimbledon in 1948, he joined British Road Services in the same year it was founded as Britain’s nationalised road freight company. 

A keen writer, as his postcards home from national service in Germany attest, he joined Motor Transport and Bus and Coach as a staff journalist in 1953. Only six years later, in 1959, he was appointed Assistant Editor of both publications.

In January 1961, aged just 31, he was made editor of Commercial Vehicles, during which time he launched their sister publication Commercial Vehicles International. From a creaky-floored office on the top floor of Grand Buildings in Trafalgar Square, served with a lift that struggled to reach it, he worked to expand the horizons of what had been an insular field of journalism - reporting on developments in commercial and military vehicles in the United States, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Russia, Africa, and Asia.

He was lured briefly to the other side in 1968, when Cummins Engines made him an offer he couldn’t refuse to work in-house heading their public relations team - though in the words of his longtime friend and colleague Alan Bunting: “as a journalist at heart he found the spin-doctoring world of PR hard to stomach.”

By 1970, he had left and gone freelance, producing reports on industries as varied as Japanese motorcycles, ceramics, and tableware, before establishing his own suite of publications on the commercial vehicle industry. 

Notably, this included the Freight Industry Yearbook and Vehicle Metrics - the latter of which was first published in January 1973 to coincide with the UK’s entry into the Common Market. For years it was the industry bible for freight and logistics workers, commercial vehicle manufacturers, and suppliers - who were obliged to convert their old Imperial measurements into European SI units. Eric’s longstanding internationalist outlook, combined with his intense focus on technical rigour, ensured it was a success.

Eric founded Truck & Bus Builder alongside his colleague and friend Anthony Wilding in 1978 as a specialist publication providing news, data and statistics about the world commercial vehicle manufacturing industry. It swiftly established itself as a necessity for those in the field, with subscribers in over 50 countries worldwide.

Alongside his leadership of Truck & Bus Builder, Eric authored several books on commercial vehicles, including The Pictorial History of Trucks (with Graeme Ewens) in 1978, and the Mercedes-Benz, DAF, and Scania volumes of the Trucks Today series between 1979 and 1982. Truck Type Approval: A Practical Guide and Modern Trucks followed in 1983 and 1984, respectively. 

With his eldest son Jim, who joined Truck & Bus Builder in 2000, Eric continued to introduce new publications to inform and educate the commercial vehicle industry, publishing the World Bus & Coach Manufacturing Industry Report biennially from 2001, the European Truck-Trailer Industry Report from 2003, and the quarterly supplements on Future Fuels & Power, China, India, South America and East Asia from 2007.

In his professional life, his work was defined by both an entrepreneurial and commercial spirit, and an unwavering commitment to reliability, accuracy, and clear, lucid prose.

Eric approached his work with utmost diligence and effort, but it did not define his life. In his free time, he was a talented artist, producing many sketches, cartoons, landscapes and portraits. He was an avid sportsman who loved rugby and racket sports. He maintained a keen interest in history and literature, and in his retirement was a prolific writer of poems and limericks about the people around him.

He spent his final years in Dunkirk Memorial House, a care home for veterans just outside Taunton in Bishops Lydeard.

E.M.G. Gibbins 1929-2025