History of Wardle Transport

 Wardle Tranport was founded in 1963 by Doug Wardle. It intially traded as Jack's of Norton, and was run alongside travel agent Wardle Travel. For its first 38 years of existence, the company operated a small fleet of minibuses on school services. In 2001 an expansion plan was introduced,

The following year, the contracts to operate two contracted routes in Stoke were won; these were operated with three Optare Alero minibuses hired from Stoke-on-Trent City Council. One of these routes was withdrawn in 2004. Following a reduction in the number of vehicles allowed authorisation for First Potteries in the same year, Wardle gained three school services, acquiring its first double-decker vehicles to operate the routes.

A new route linking Hanley, Haywood Hospital and Burslem was launched in early 2006. The route, supported by the city council, replaced a route withdrawn by another operator, but was initially found not to be commercially viable.
In 2007, the company won a contract to operate services to Stoke City F.C. home matches, initially using four double-deck buses.

A new direct service linking Blurton to Hanley, branded as Plumline, was introduced in 2008. An Optare Versa single-decker was bought for use on the route.

During December 2010 Wardle Transport was acquired by Arriva.

Arriva Midlands acquired the Staffordshire operations of D&G Coach and Bus in early August 2011, with a fleet of 30 buses and 62 employees in Staffordshire. D&G’s Staffordshire operation became part of Wardle Transport and the business will now operate from the newly acquired D&G Staffs depot in Adderley Green, Longton. (D&G will continue to operate as a separate business from its base in Crewe, Cheshire which is not affected by the sale of its Staffordshire operations to Arriva).

22 December 2011, wardletransport.com went live on the web
During June 2012, Wardle Transport join the Facebook phenomena, shortly followed by twitter in 2013