Twelve years ago Robert Montague, then chief executive of the Tiphook container business and owner of the multi-million pound, 1,300 acre Pusey House estate near Faringdon, not to mention a large private aircraft, went bankrupt to the tune of £30m owed in personal debts.

Now he is back, again hiring out containers, running a business that turns over £8m a year from the Blenheim Business Park in Long Hanborough.

He has also been shortlisted in the Business Person of the Year category in the Oxfordshire Business Awards. It seems you cannot keep a serial entrepreneur down.

Mr Montague, who now lives in Stanton Harcourt, is once again his same old flamboyant self pink shirt, gold monogrammed cuff links, salesman's charm that you feel would enable him to rent a chill-truck to an eskimo.

He said: "I live and breathe trailers and containers my parents ran a transport business. After the bankruptcy I just had to make some money, dust myself off, and get on with the only business I knew.

"I was lucky that Silke, my wife, helped me through everything and she is still my wife!"

Mr Montague's bankruptcy attracted what he described as acres' of publicity in 1995, largely because Tiphook, the trailer hire company of which he was chief executive, had the year before chalked up £330m losses but had nevertheless paid him a fat-cat remuneration package of more than £1.4m.

He told In Business that the bankruptcy axe finally fell because he had underwritten some company debts against the £8m Pusey House estate which, as well as the Georgian manor, came complete with 14 cottages, listed gardens, a lake, and parkland.

He said that 95 per cent of the money he had owed had been located in the USA. It had been large banks that had foreclosed on Pusey.

He added: "But I was fortunate that my trustee in bankruptcy agreed I should be allowed to start again within a year."

And although there were various restrictions under his severance from Tiphook, he was allowed to go into truck sales immediately.

He began again in 1995, with help from old City contacts, manufacturers, colleagues, and friends, by starting up AXIS, a new container and trailer hire company in Cologne, Germany. In 2004, the holding company, Intermodal Resource, now based in Long Hanborough, was listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

In 1995 the company had 100 vehicles on the roads; now it has 3,000 and increasing. It employs 20 people in Oxfordshire and a further seven in Cologne.

The majority of the trailers (2,500) are still rented out in Germany, where the infrastructure allows containers to travel more extensively by truck, train and barge and there are fewer weight restrictions.

But Mr Montague says he is delighted to be based back in Oxfordshire, rather than commuting almost every week to Germany.

He said: "I love it here and, apart from that, Oxfordshire is an ideal place for a business like this central and with good communications."

So what is new about this new business, to cause it to rise from the ashes and flourish?

Mr Montague said: "We have introduced a web portal called AssetCare and can now look after the servicing and maintenance of all vehicles."

Customers of Intermodal Resource are mainly logistics companies but also include some EU postal services.

Intermodal Resource started life in Britain in a Regus office suite and then moved to Long Hanborough last year.

The question on most people's lips when they get stuck behind a lorry, very possibly a lorry rented from Intermodal Resource, is of course, why can't that go by rail?

Mr Montague said: "There is no proper rail system in Great Britain. The infrastructure simply isn't there. Also, of course, the distances in Britain are smaller than those in mainland Europe."

The lessons learned from Tiphook are that every deal should be cash positive' (that is, he should not in effect lend customers money) and that he should only lease units from manufacturers on open-ended contracts that can be terminated if his customer, in turn, ends the hire agreement.

That way Intermodal Resource will not end up owing money on units that are not hired out to anyone.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said at a recent meeting at the Kidlington home of tycoon Sir Richard Branson, that the consequences of business failure should perhaps be made less severe, as they constituted disincentives for entrepreneurship.

Did Mr Montague agree?

"No", he said. "It was a dreadful experience for myself and my family. You find out who your friends are.

"But no it's no good being sorry for yourself. You wake up and you realise life must go on."

n Intermodal resource, 01993 883148, or see www.intermodalresource.com