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Stobart Group has turned down the possibility of buying collapsed Leeds haulier Macfarlane Transport Holdings (MTH), claiming it would have been "onerous" to take on. The Cross Green-based haulier was placed into administration on 2 July, with corporate recovery firm KPMG blaming "rising fuel prices and a competitive market".

However, in its most recent accounts, for the year ending 31 December 2007, the firm boasted that it had insulated itself from the effects of rising fuel costs through "a large proportion of our major customer accounts now having fuel matrix mechanisms". Although the company turned a modest profit in 2007, the accounts show that it owed more than £6m within the following 12 months, with another £2.2m owed after one year and had total assets of £8.42m, leaving net assets of just £139,432. They also show that director and owner Stephen Cooke paid himself more than £200,000 in 2007.

Cooke used MTH to buy the assets of Macfarlane Transport, which had previously gone into administration in 2006. Stobart chief executive Andrew Tinkler tells MT that he was approached last week by the firm's administrators, but could see no value for Stobart's shareholders. "We had a look at the situation, but felt that it would be an onerous [business] to take on.

"It wasn't going  to be a good investment - it had an element of good contract work, but we didn't know if that was going to be transferred over." Tinkler says the remainder of Macfarlane's work was "ad-hoc fill-in work" where it would have been difficult to recover rising fuel costs from clients. It is understood that Macfarlane's former partner CM Downton has now taken on additional work in the print distribution sector.