Boalloy, widely regarded as the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of trailer manufacturers, has collapsed into administration and closed with immediate effect.

Administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers were appointed to the Congleton, Cheshire-based group - which includes Boalloy Engineering; Boalloy Fastruck; and West Midlands chassis and specialist trailer builder M&G Trailers - on Monday 15 October following sustained losses. All Boalloy sites - Congleton; Bellshill, Lanarkshire; and Lye, West Mids - will close with 272 job losses; 40 staff will remain to assist in running down operations.

It is good to see that some transport companies are in demand. Today logistics giant Wincanton announced it had acquired Swales Haulage for £5.3 million. This is the second purchase of a haulage company specialising in the building trade – last year it purchased RDL. According to Wincanton, Swales Haulage is one of the top five businesses within the building services market, operating from 11 locations across the UK. At the same time as Wincanton purchased RDL, it also snapped up home delivery specialist The Lane Group.
What makes this particularly interesting is that Wincanton is investing in UK niche operators. These will help it diversify from its giant food logistics operation. It also sensible for Wincanton to buy in the UK as it makes most of its most of its money here. Its continental European arm has had to fight hard to get a decent return.
Wincanton is not the only company investing in the UK. Norbert Dentressangle
is planning to buy Christian Salvensen next month and earlier looked at buying Eddie Stobart. And, of course, it is not so long ago that Deutsche Post purchased DHL.
We may moan about the state of the industry, but many see it as a good place to invest.

The Clipper Group has bought Iveco and Fiat dealership Stormont Truck and Van. The deal by the Yorkshire-based specialist logistics services company adds the south and Midlands based dealership to Northern Commercials which it bought in December 2005.

Logistics giant TDG is currently subject to a takeover bid from Laxey Partners Limited, an Isle of Man-based hedge fund manager - or, as it describes itself, a "globally active value investor". Well, whatever that means, you'd expect the fund to have no intrinsic interest to a transport anorak such as me (and, I expect, you).

But look deep enough, and there's always a link somewhere: it turns out that until recently Laxey owned a fair chunk of Saurer AG, the Swiss manufacturer of textile machinery - and previously, of trucks like this: