HOWZAT

Since then, Go Ahead’s careful approach has looked a lot smarter. And investors who backed the original team have been rewarded with a rapidly rising share price.

One consequence is that Moyes, with 2m shares in the group, is now rich enough on paper never to have to work again. So why willingly accept the pressure of running a quoted transport group? “Because I happen to enjoy what I do,” he smiles. “Anyway, my stake in the company means that my interests are very well aligned with those of the shareholders.”

Few expect much to change under Moyes, previously deputy chief executive, such was his closeness to Ballinger. The group’s aviation-services arm, Aviance, may be sold — it has been plagued by problems since 9/11, and Moyes has pledged to drive it back into profit, or reconsider its future.

“But there’ll be no surprises,” promises Moyes. “I’ve been an influence on where we’ve got to over the past 21 years, and if there was something else that should have been done, I’d have done it.”

Go Ahead’s regional bosses say Moyes’s transition from operations chief to overall boss has been seamless, and the emphasis on local autonomy remains.

“Chris has a wealth of experience,” says Roger French, managing director of Brighton & Hove Bus Company, which was bought by Go Ahead in 1993.

“And Go Ahead has been much more selective than others about what it has acquired. It has real managers making real decisions in its local areas. That’s pertinent because real success comes from working with local authorities.”

Moyes says Go Ahead’s decentralised approach allows for pride in regional businesses, and gives local bosses the freedom to negotiate terms and conditions appropriate to local labour markets. Likewise its strategy of heading south, despite its northeastern roots, is dictated by the need to find areas of population growth.

“Classically, that drives traffic congestion and that in turn encourages local authorities to look for solutions that involve public transport. It’s why we are less interested in rural services.”

The same quiet logic has been the hallmark of Moyes’s three-and-a-half decades in the transport business. Born in Shropshire, the eldest of eight, and brought up in London and Birkenhead, he says he inherited his father’s love of mechanical engineering and his mother’s knack for organising.

“Dad clawed his way up from a very modest background in Merseyside to become head of mechanical engineering at the local tech,” says Moyes, “and he was very ambitious that everyone should achieve things.”

Moyes’s love of transport developed while he was still a boy, stirred by trips to watch trolley buses and Mallard locomotives. Summer jobs as a bus conductor led to a traineeship at a local bus firm after university. Stints in management at Maidstone, Dewsbury, Darlington and Newcastle followed. The lessons he learnt on the way, he says, are as pertinent today as they always were.

“One is that it is important to know the job from the ground floor up, which is why we make our trainees get their bus driving licences. Attention to detail is vital, as is style of management. We try to manage in a way that we would have liked to be managed.”

Others who have worked with Moyes describe him as “good at assessing people and situations” and well liked in the industry. “He’s a thoughtful, considered guy,” says Phil White, group chief executive at National Express, “but don’t underestimate him. If he has to be hard, he will be.”

Rivals say his biggest difficulty will simply be making his own mark when he has been so closely identified with what has gone before.

And last week’s stock- market vote of confidence could come back to haunt him. Failing to sort out Go Ahead’s Aviance subsidiary or missing out on the Kent integrated rail franchise — “that would be a disaster for him”, says one industry rival — are two potential stumbling blocks.

In the meantime, he has his bus collection to take his mind off things. Every year, apparently, he gets all the Moyes clan together on holiday, and brings one of his vintage buses along, so he can take everyone out for day trips.

I’ve a suggestion. Perhaps he should offer the same treat to shareholders at next autumn’s annual meeting. Given the reaction to his first month, it promises to be an interesting ride.