About 575 UK road-freight companies publish a full profit-and-loss, booking £43.1bn of combined turnover between them. They run on the same motorways and hire from the same driver pool — but the category spans three very different businesses, and their economics could not be more different. Figures are approximate — verify against a company’s own accounts before relying on any single number.
Three businesses, one road
The giants split cleanly. The parcel networks are the money machines — last-mile delivery for e-commerce, where density and automation create real margin. Contract logistics (running clients’ warehouses and fleets) is a thin, competitive grind. And dedicated/own-account distribution (Martin-Brower, McDonald’s UK supply chain, £6.85bn at 0.2%) is a pass-through on someone else’s volume.
| Company | What it is | Turnover | PBT | Turnover YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Martin-Brower UK | dedicated food distribution | £6.85bn | £15.6M | −3% |
| DHL Supply Chain | contract logistics | £3.13bn | £36.8M | +0% |
| Tesco Distribution | grocery own-account | £2.37bn | £120.7M | +1% |
| GXO Logistics UK | contract logistics | £2.05bn | £45.2M | +12% |
| Evri | parcel network | £1.85bn | £176.2M | +10% |
| DPDgroup UK | parcel network | £1.48bn | £198.3M | +1% |
| Wincanton | contract logistics | £1.17bn | −£88.4M* | — |
| Turners (Soham) | haulage (family) | £592M | £71.5M | +6% |
| Eddie Stobart | haulage | £557M | −£0.9M | +10% |
*Wincanton’s latest accounts cover a shortened nine-month period straddling the GXO takeover and carry ~£123M of one-off charges (deal costs and impairments); the prior full-year loss was ~£45M. Evri’s year, by contrast, was a record — pre-tax profit rose from ~£119M to £176M, with the costs of the Apollo buyout sitting above the operating company.
The contrast is the whole story: DPD cleared £198M of profit (~13% margin) delivering parcels and Evri a record £176M running the same last-mile model at even greater scale — while Wincanton lost money running contract logistics at a similar scale of turnover. Among pure hauliers, the family-owned Turners of Soham is the standout — £71M profit at a healthy margin and growing headcount +11%, the opposite of the thin-margin reputation general haulage carries.
The shape of the market
This is a sector of substantial, profitable companies — the £5–100M bands are ~80% profitable. Unlike most markets we’ve mapped, there’s barely a struggling small tier; the barrier to filing full accounts here (fleets, depots, audited scale) means the long tail of one-truck operators simply doesn’t appear.
Where the margins are: specialist haulage
The best-margin operators aren’t the general hauliers — they’re specialists carrying things that need particular equipment or handling: H.W. Coates (51%, tankers/hazardous), UCH Logistics (39%), World Courier UK (29%, temperature-controlled pharma), Alan Firmin (31%), Bertschi UK (22%, chemical logistics). General pallet-and-parcel haulage runs at low-to-mid teens at best (Jack Richards & Son, 13%); the premium is in the cargo, not the lorry.
Growth, read with care
Most of the fast growth is acquisition or new-contract wins rather than organic share: RXO UK (+263%), DP World Logistics (+88% but loss-making) and several mid-size hauliers winning fresh contracts and hiring to serve them (Jays Logistics +88% / +80% staff, Wilson of Kendal +65% / +94% staff — those staff-backed ones are the genuine signal). Parcel volumes lifted Evri and GXO at scale.
Market structure and vintage
Freight is concentrated at the top (top 5 = 38%, top 10 = 48%) — the parcel networks, contract-logistics majors and grocery own-account fleets — over a broad mid-market of regional and specialist hauliers. The vintage profile is the oldest in this batch: 205 of 575 companies are pre-1990, the long-established family haulage firms that still anchor the mid-market, with few new entrants.
What the map shows
- The parcel networks are the profit engine — DPD cleared ~£200M on e-commerce delivery, and Evri a record £176M running the same model at greater scale.
- Contract logistics is the grind — Wincanton lost £88M; running clients’ warehouses at scale is thin and competitive.
- Specialist cargo beats general haulage — tankers, pharma and chemicals carry 20–50% margins; pallets and parcels carry low teens.
- It’s an old, consolidated mid-market — family hauliers from before 1990 still anchor it, under a concentrated top.
Methodology and caveats
This covers only the UK road-freight companies that publish a full profit-and-loss; the one-truck and owner-operator tail is too small to report figures and doesn’t appear; large one-off losses may be restructuring or contract write-downs rather than ordinary trading; extreme proportional outliers are excluded from the charts. Figures are approximate and business-type labels are directional. This is analysis, not financial advice — verify any specific figure against the company’s own accounts.