Meet the Basingstoke father of three driving aid into war-torn Ukraine in an £800 truck

Jez Goodwin has been living and sleeping each night in the 7.5 tonne vehicle which he originally brought on eBay to help relocate with his family from the south of England to the Czech Republic.

He’s been carrying supplies over the Polish border, distributing essential medicines and equipment to those both fleeing and fighting Russian advances.

His friends have told of how he’s often had to abandon the truck, which doesn't have heating, to seek shelter in a stranger’s basement after being woken by the air raid siren warning of incoming Russian missiles.

He’s also faced nervous stand-offs with Ukrainian soldiers, having to draw pictures in the dirt to overcome the language barrier and inform them he’s there to help rather than attack.

John Utteridge, 41, has been friends with Jez for around 20 years and has been in regular contact with him since the start of the Russian invasion.

He said: “As soon as this all kicked off, I thought, ‘I bet he’s going to end up doing something’, and low and behold I messaged him, and he was already in Ukraine.”

Mr Utteridge, from Basingstoke, met Jez in the early 2000s through the Shire Land Rover club. They began racing vehicles together in Russia as part of a team of over ten people, dubbed ‘House of Flying Spanners’, competing until around 2010.

Their exploits saw them make friends and recruit team members from across Europe in countries which included Finland, Russia, Estonia, Belgium and Holland.

'House of Flying Spanners' in Russia

During the pandemic, Jez, who is Basingstoke born and bred, decided to up sticks and move with his three children to his wife’s home country, the Czech Republic.

Mr Utteridge said: “He scraped together the pennies to move to the Czech Republic with his wife and kids, and he brought this truck on eBay for about £800 to get him out there. He’s been fixing it up for months now just to get the thing to scrape through its MOT, but as soon as he heard about what was happening in Ukraine, he just packed up his stuff and off he went.

“He’s the sort of chap who makes friends everywhere he goes, so he’s got loads of contacts across Europe from when we were racing who are supplying aid for him to take over. But as you can imagine, he’s running off very little sleep and doing a lot of miles in and out of a warzone, so some of the details are a little hazy at the minute.”

Mr Utteridge says Jez’s point of contact has been a young Ukrainian girl called Elaina who is acting as a ‘fixer upper’ for aid workers travelling across the border.

“You’d expect to see her hanging about with her mates on Basingstoke high street outside the nail bar, but instead she’s the fixer in Ukraine who’s on her phone 24 hours a day organising supplies and people in and out of the country,” he said.

Mr Utteridge has since started a campaign to help with Jez’s efforts and is looking to get both money and supplies together for himself and Mike Brown, a fellow teammate from Southampton, to drive to the Polish border.

He said: “The rest of us saw what he was doing out there so we text him to say, ‘what can we do, what do you need?’

“That’s how it works, the team just switches back on. A load of guys from Finland packed up a van with supplies and headed over to meet him, as did a friend from Nottingham who has just jumped in a 4x4 and driven to the border. What we’re trying to do is sort out all the logistics for a collection over here and get it out to him so he can continue doing what he’s currently doing.

“The real priority is medical supplies - we’ve asked Elaina to give us her shopping list of essentials and we’ll try and do our best to get it to Jez who can take it over into Ukraine.

“We’ve set up two GoFundMe pages, one for Jez to put diesel in his tank so he can continue running up horrific credit card bills knowing that he can pay it off, and another to raise the money for our fuel and travel so we can get donations out to him.

“It may not work out that way, someone may come along with a van which is already going to Poland, in which case we can load what we have onto that, give them money for diesel and donate whatever is leftover to Jez and the British Red Cross. But you just have to get the ball rolling.”

Mr Utteridge says they’ve already built up a small reserve of essentials by calling in favours from friends who are in the military and healthcare who have been donating much needed medical equipment and old armoured jackets and bulletproof helmets.

He’s now looking for further medicine, medical supplies and humanitarian aid to be taken to Viables Community Centre in The Harrow Way, which staff have offered up as a collection point.

For more information on what items are needed for the collection, and links to donate to both GoFundMe pages, visit flyingspanners.uk/doku/doku.php.