News

Family ties continue to dominate the UK haulage industry, but operators are warned to ensure relatives are not shoehorned into jobs. Family ties underpin the UK haulage industry with 75% of hauliers employing relatives, according to business advice company Tenon . A survey by the firm found that bedroom and boardroom do mix for hauliers, with more than a third of the nation's transport bosses (40%) running their company with their partner or spouse.

Almost as many (31%) intend to pass their business on to their children and 21% inherited their company themselves. The survey indicated that hauliers are more likely than any other entrepreneurs except farmers to employ members of their own family. But Tenon's director of business services, Michaela Johns, warns that hauliers need to be careful when giving jobs to family members. She says: "Most critically, they should be careful of shoehorning relatives into hereditary roles which they are not well equipped or appropriately skilled for."

Most family hauliers are aware of this risk. One of those who took part in the survey, Trevor Ellis, managing director of Rutland-based CS Ellis, says family members have left the firm in the past if they found the job was not for them. But he still values the role some family members play in the company. One of the latest additions is Ellis' son Charles, who trained as an accountant and worked with  another haulier before joining the family firm.

Ellis says: "We said to him when he left school that what we needed was an accountant and he went off and got trained and worked for Grant Thornton and then with another haulier. Now he is with us but it's not just because of the bloodline. He had to have something to offer." Ellis adds that the family ethic also works for the company in other ways. He says: "A family business has different values - we have eight or nine fathers and sons working for us as drivers, in the warehouse or in the office."