What is Haulage: Everything You Need to Know

Haulage plays a huge role in the UK’s economy and trade sector. Road haulage, specifically, is essential for many individuals and businesses across the country - in fact, it even affects you without you even realising it, since much of the food you eat, clothes you wear and products you buy are dependent on haulage services.

With the movement and distribution of such a wide variety of goods being dependent on such services, it’s no wonder that the haulage industry is one of the largest employment sectors in the UK, with extensive employees required to keep things running smoothly behind the scenes of the services provided.

But what exactly is haulage and what services can haulage companies provide? Read on to find out as we tell you all you need to know about haulage in this article.

What is Haulage?

By definition, haulage simply means the commercial transport of goods. This can include transport both either by road or by rail (also known as freight) and involve any array of goods from waste products to food supplies, fragile goods, machinery or even specialist heavy haulage loads (for example, boats).

In the UK road haulage is responsible for the transportation of an impressive 98% of consumer products and delivery as well as food and agricultural products, which is one of the main reasons why it is so vital to the economy.



Next, we’ll go on to discuss some of the different services a haulage company may offer, looking at these each in more detail.

Haulage Services: From Waste Removal to Parcel Delivery

Waste Disposal

Just as haulage companies can transport goods ready for a consumer to receive, they can also transport those that people are disposing of. Considering the size of haulage vehicles, they are incredibly adept and efficient at holding large amounts of waste, easily managing to transport these for disposal in accordance with regulations set out by the Environment Agency and the European Waste Code.

This can include a wide range of both liquid and solid forms of waste, of which haulage companies will ensure all is disposed of in a safe and legal manner, whilst being as environmentally friendly as possible and recycling as much of the waste as possible.

For example, some companies (such as William Thompson & Son) offer professional landfill services for the disposal of construction materials and strive to recycle as many of the landfill products they collect as they can, which they do by separating any recyclable materials (such as wood or building aggregates) and recycling these accordingly, then disposing of the rest safely and correctly.

Parcel Delivery

Though often associated with large scale delivery operations, haulage companies can be utilised to arrange mass-scale parcel deliveries across the country. Haulage vehicles can be used as delivery trucks to efficiently deliver larger goods to individuals and businesses across the UK from the same vehicle, whilst general delivery vans can be used to deliver all smaller packages in local areas.

This is currently done by many big-name companies such as Argos or Amazon, who are known for offering large home goods. By using haulage vehicles to deliver these larger items that they sell to their customers, they can increase the efficiency of their deliveries of said larger items. This is also especially useful when carrying deliveries of mass products to businesses.

Transporting Fragile Goods

Since haulage companies specialise in the transportation of various goods, this makes them especially suitable for handling and transporting large fragile goods, also. With their experience, necessary training and specialist equipment, they are the ideal transporters of choice when it comes to moving fragile and/or expensive goods with a minimised risk of loss or damage, especially for longer journeys,

This could include a multitude of different things, such as fully grown trees, large digital display screens, statues and artwork or even musical instruments, such as pianos.

Plant Haulage

Many industries, such as construction or agriculture, rely on plant machinery to operate their daily tasks. Plant machinery is the name given to a range of heavy machines and vehicles that are used in the industrial sector; it includes things such as excavators, rollers, dumpers and even some types of cranes.

Though many of these may travel when operated, they often can only cover small distances and have a very limited speed, making them perfectly suitable to use on-site, but not on the roads. As such, they must be transported by other means.

Plant haulage, then, involves the transportation of plant machinery.

Due to the size and weight of such machinery, special haulage vehicles must be used to safely handle these heavy loads. These vehicles also come equipped with specialist equipment to keep plant machinery safe and secure during transportation, for example they often feature winches and side protection in order to keep the machinery from moving around inside the vehicle and displacing its wait or causing an accident.

Heavy Haulage

As its name suggests, heavy haulage involves the safe transportation of particularly large and heavy loads. As such, most heavy haulage vehicles must follow a strict speed limit restriction of 35-40mph, though there are several categories of heavy haulage each with their own speed and weight limit restrictions, and sometimes special permission may be required in order to be able to transport particularly heavy loads.

Plant haulage, then, is an example of heavy haulage, whilst other examples include the transportation of agricultural equipment, other vehicles and even static homes. When transporting such large loads, many businesses opt to use heavy haulage services, since it is much more efficient and economical to transport goods using a single heavy haulage load as opposed to using multiple smaller vehicle loads or having to make multiple journeys.

Abnormal Loads

As part of heavy haulage, there is the category of abnormal loads, which are loads that don’t come under the category of vehicles, machinery, goods or waste. This could include items such as wind turbines, bridge sections or industrial cranes - all of which will also have their own specialist rules and regulations in regards to weight limits and speed restrictions, as well as the amount of notice that must be given before these items are moved.

Explaining this latter regulation in more detail, sometimes a notice period (typically of two to five days) must be given before planning to transport such items in order to ensure that all the necessary safety regulations are in place before its journey, and so that the relevant personnel are aware that a heavy or abnormal load is out for transportation.

William Thompson & Son Quarry Services and Construction Materials

Do you work in the construction industry and often find yourself in need of type 1 stone materials? William Thompson & Son is the leading supplier you need.

From our Glasgow quarry (specifically based in Dumbarton), we have proudly supplied local construction and building companies with our high-quality quarry products for more than 75 years now, and we continue to deliver the same quality products and services to new and existing customers alike.

We supply a range of natural type 1 stone products, including those that are excavated from our quarry along with a variety of recycled crushed stone products, such as:

●     Gabion stone

●     Armour stone

●     Whindust

●     Concrete sand

●     Drainage stone

Our natural quarry products are suitable for a vast range of products, whether that be for small-scale infrastructure or the construction of flood defences, road surfacing and driveway laying. Whatever you require, we will deliver it to you in the necessary size and weight to meet your requirements.

Along with providing quarry products, we also operate a landfill service. We will arrange to collect your construction waste and take it back to our site to dispose of safely and responsibly, first going through to separate any materials that can instead be recycled so as to minimise our environmental effect as much as possible. When using our service, you can rest assured that your waste will be disposed of as ethically as possible.

If you would like to learn more about our products and services or would like to enquire about arranging a delivery, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team today - we operate Mondays to Saturdays.