The latest Motor Transport annual Top 100 rankings prove that many operators still managed to increase both turnover and pre-tax profit as reported in their financial accounts last year, despite the tough economic climate.
The average turnover for this year’s crème-de-la-crème increased 10% to £178.4m, from £162m the previous year. However, the average profit has dropped to £2.7m from £3m in 2008.
Meanwhile the average fleet size among our Top 100 operators has grown to 979 vehicles, compared with 665 the previous year.
The top four operators remain unchanged, with DHL taking pole position, followed by Wincanton, Kuehne + Nagel and TNT. UPS, however, moves up three places to take the fifth spot from Ceva Logistics this year.
There are also several new entrants to the rankings, notably Chris Hayter Transport, Cranleigh Freight Services and F Swain & Sons. Macclesfield, Cheshire-based F Swain took the 100th place with turnover of £16.5m, just edging out The Potter Group, which saw turnover fall to £15.6m last year from £17.4m in 2008.
Meanwhile, Stobart Group took the number one spot in the Growth in Turnover table, with a massive 296% rise in turnover to £431m from £108.8m. Culina Logistics closely followed with a 179% rise in turnover to £97.2m from £34.8m.
With DHL divesting itself over Christmas of two of its businesses – DHL Container Logistics and much of its domestic parcel operation – as well as Stiller selling its tanker division to Hargreaves Transport last summer, next year’s Top 100 rankings will certainly see a shift in players.
Interactive tables
You can access all the 2008 data using the interactive tables below. Click on the tabs at the top to swap between individual tables; click on any column header to sort the table data from highest to lowest (or click again to sort from lowest to highest).