A throwaway remark has led to the resurrection of a Kent haulage company and the rescue of nearly 80 jobs.

Alan Emslie was about to shut down AE Chilled - a multi-million-pound company he founded in 2015 - when entrepreneur Peter Waddell came into the office to chase overdue rent on the firm’s site at Poulton Close, Dover.

Mr Emslie, 45, recalls: “I was at my wit’s end, we had a large customer go into administration owing us hundreds of thousands of pounds. I had already lost my marriage and injected £350,000 from my own funds back into the business to try and save it and the jobs.

“I just said to Peter, jokingly, ‘Don’t suppose you want to buy a business, do you?’ It just so happened that he did.”

Mr Waddell, 58, proved to be just the white knight in shining armour that AE Chilled needed.

He is best known as the founder of the successful Big Motoring World brand - which he left earlier this year. He is currently pursuing a claim of unfair dismissal.

As well as injecting some of his own £500 million fortune into Alan Emslie’s reborn company, now operating as Big Transport, Mr Waddell has also created a new management app to streamline operations.

The company’s turnaround has been dramatic since Mr Emslie’s jokey offer in June and the firm’s official rebirth in August.

“Initially, we still had to scale down a bit to move forward and we lost a couple of head office jobs,” said Mr Emslie.

“But over the past three months, we have pushed back up to the £1m a month turnover and a 50-strong fleet of trucks that we had before we crashed and we have a clear path and strategy moving forward, under Peter’s guidance as our chairman.”

Looking back, Mr Emslie admits that a dash for growth may have been the undoing of “the company I put my whole life into”. Within six months of start-up in 2015, he had grown AE Chilled to £500,000 a year turnover by using subcontracted hauliers, thereby avoiding the costly overhead of running its own vehicles.

“Growth continued to be steady, and we hit £1.5m a year turnover in 2020,” said Mr Emslie. “Then we got noticed by a major supermarket chain, and things really took off during Covid.

“I decided that building our own fleet would deliver the further growth and resilience the company needed and allow us to diversify into fresh produce. Starting with ten trucks, we had 50 within a couple of years.

“Annual turnover soared to £6.5m and was on course for £14m this year, but it was the aftermath of Covid that did for us.

“Like most industries, production of trucks and spares, plummeted during Covid so we ended up paying over the odds to expand and maintain our fleet. Even our growing turnover could not keep pace with interest on our credit.”

Now, however, it is set to reach its previous peak, has increased its fleet to 75 and doubled staff to 150.

The company will also diversify into car transportation, drawing on Mr Waddell’s motor trade experience. He revealed the new company is hunting for a new five to six-acre headquarters site in the area around Maidstone with parking for up to 150 trucks, to give better access into the motorway network for what is now a nationwide operation, though the 1.5-acre Dover site could be retained to expand European operations.

Waddell’s own investment is now worth £11m and he wants to inject another £25m to put Big Transport on track to be “the next Eddie Stobart”.