Kaleb Cooper’s business ‘nearly died’ due to huge £60,000 bill after starting it by paying himself 50p an hour
Kaleb Cooper has revealed his business almost went under as a result of a massive £5,000 bill he was left facing every month.
The farmhand, who has become a huge star through Amazon Prime Video's Clarkson's Farm, has revealed all in his new book, entitled It's A Farming Thing.
In the book, the 26-year-old lifts the lid on pretty much everything.
From food and pets to parenting and fashion, he's got a thing or two to say about most things - something that will come as no surprise to those who have tuned in to the first three seasons of life on Diddly Squat Farm.
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The young farmer - who recently spoke out about Jeremy Clarkson's serious health scare - started off by paying himself just 50 pence an hour due to the volatile margins that can exist in the farming world.
But the businesses he has built, which have hundreds of thousands to their name as per Companies House, almost 'died', according to the man himself.
And it was all due to one thing that ended up costing him £60,000 a year.
"I got my first ever tractor when I was fifteen years old," he writes in It's A Farming Thing.
"The bragging rights were amazing - just fifteen with my own tractor. And it was back in the day when I was courting too, and it was wicked as far as that went.
"But the tractor itself - a Case International - was rubbish. It kept breaking down.
"Then I bought two tractors from CLAAS, which didn't live up to their name."
Cooper revealed that the CLAAS tractors ending up costing him a whopping £5,000 in maintenance; equating to a massive £60k a year.
"That's enough to buy two new tractors a year," he said.
"Those tractors almost finished my business, and then a New Holland tractor pretty much saved it."
Kaleb can be seen driving his CLAAS tractors in Clarkson's Farm, with the green tractor usually used to help bail Jeremy out of something foolish.
According to the most recent documents on Companies House, Kaleb Cooper Productions Limited saw its annual earnings jump from £122,436 to £242,449.
And another of his ventures, Kaleb Cooper Contracting Limited, has seen profits boom too.
This firm, which deals with more traditional farming matters, has seen its year-on-year money in the bank increase from £52,067 to £96,387.
The paperwork, which was made public this year via Companies House, shows Cooper has upped his equity across both companies by a whopping £164,333.
You can buy It's A Farming Thing by Kaleb Cooper in stories now (RRP £20).
Topics: Kaleb Cooper, Books, Business, Money
Tom Earnshaw