Haulage Accountants for UK Haulage Companies
Haulage is a high-turnover, thin-margin industry with an unusual amount of regulation attached to the balance sheet. Your licence depends on demonstrable finance. Your margin depends on knowing which vehicles, which customers and which lanes actually make money. Your VAT position depends on where the goods move and who the customer is. None of that is visible in a set of accounts prepared the way a shop's accounts are prepared.
This page is for haulage companies rather than individual drivers. If you run one vehicle, the HGV owner-driver page is a better fit. If you are between one truck and a proper fleet, see small fleet accountants.
- Who this is for
- Road haulage companies operating under a standard national or standard international operator licence, with employed drivers, subcontractors, or both.
- The problem
- A haulage business generates a very large amount of transactional detail, and most accounting setups aggregate it into one figure for turnover and one for cost, which is exactly the level at which a haulage business cannot be managed.
The Accounting a Haulage Business Actually Needs
- Statutory accounts and Corporation Tax, prepared with the vehicle fleet, finance agreements and residual values handled properly rather than lumped into fixed assets.
- Per-vehicle and per-customer reporting, so the monthly figures answer which truck earned its keep and which customer's rate no longer covers the run. See cost per mile and per-truck profitability.
- Operator licence financial standing maintained and evidenced across the period, not assembled in a panic when the Traffic Commissioner asks. See O-licence financial standing.
- VAT returns, including the treatment of international freight movements and the paperwork that has to support a zero rate. See international haulage VAT.
- Payroll for drivers, including night-out payments, tramping allowances and the approval and checking obligations that sit behind them. See HGV payroll and driver allowances.
- Subcontractor payments, self-billing arrangements and the status of the owner-drivers you engage.
- Fuel card and bunkering reconciliation across multiple vehicles and cards.
Reporting That Answers Haulage Questions
A standard profit and loss account tells you the business made money or did not. A haulage business needs to know where, and the analysis has to be built into the bookkeeping rather than reconstructed at the year end.
| Question | What it needs in the books |
|---|---|
| Which vehicles cover their cost | Fuel, maintenance, tyres, finance and driver cost coded to a vehicle, not to a single overhead account |
| Which customers are worth keeping | Revenue and direct cost coded to a customer, with subcontracted work separated from own-fleet work |
| What an empty mile costs | Loaded and total miles recorded per vehicle from tachograph or telematics data |
| Whether a rate increase landed | Revenue per revenue mile tracked by customer over time, not just total turnover |
| Whether we can afford another truck | Financial standing headroom, current finance commitments and the cash effect of a new agreement modelled before signing |
What We Need From You
To quote for a haulage company
- Licence type and the number of vehicles and trailers authorised.
- Number of employed drivers, agency drivers and subcontracted owner-drivers.
- Whether you run international work, and if so to which markets.
- Your current bookkeeping software and who does the day-to-day entry.
- Last filed accounts and the current year's management figures, if any exist.
- Fuel supply arrangement: cards, bunkered fuel, or both.
- Whether customers self-bill you, you invoice them, or both depending on the customer.
Where It Goes Wrong
- Financial standing is treated as an application hurdle rather than a continuing condition, and a routine check finds the average balance well below the requirement.
- Night-out payments are paid at the industry rate without the approval notice or the checking system that makes them free of tax and National Insurance, which turns them into unreported earnings.
- Subcontracted owner-drivers are engaged on terms that look like employment, and the exposure sits unquantified until somebody asks.
- International movements are zero rated on the assumption that anything crossing a border is zero rated, without the evidence to support the treatment.
- Fuel is posted from bank payments rather than from card statements, so the VAT recovered does not tie to any invoice.
- Depreciation policy bears no relation to what the trucks are actually worth, so the balance sheet used for financial standing is misleading in the direction that matters.
Fees and the Next Step
Haulage company work is scoped and then fixed: we agree what is included, at what frequency, and what it costs, before anything starts. Where you want per-vehicle reporting, the setup work to make that possible is quoted separately and once.
Tell us your licence type, vehicle count and driver mix, and we will come back with a fixed quote and a proposed reporting cycle.
Common Questions
How often should a haulage company get management figures?
Monthly is the useful frequency, because fuel and maintenance move enough that a quarter is too coarse to act on. The figures that matter are revenue per revenue mile by customer, cost per mile by vehicle, and the financial standing position. Anything else is secondary.
Do you deal with owner-drivers we subcontract to?
We deal with your side of it: the self-billing arrangement, the accounting treatment of the payments, and an assessment of whether the engagements carry employment status risk. The subcontractor's own accounts are their business, though several of our clients are on both sides of that relationship.
Can you take over from our current accountant mid-year?
Yes. We write to them for the handover information, agree a cut-off, and pick up from there. The point worth agreeing early is who is filing the next VAT return, so nothing falls between the two of us.
Do you advise on operator licence compliance generally?
No. We deal with the financial standing element and the accounting evidence behind it. Drivers' hours, tachograph compliance, maintenance systems, transport manager duties and public inquiry representation are matters for your transport manager, a licensing consultant or a transport lawyer.
Other Services
- Small Fleet AccountantsTwo to ten trucks: the stage where the owner is still driving and the business has outgrown the way it was set up.
- HGV Owner-Driver AccountantsOne truck, your name on the finance agreement, and a business that has to fund a vehicle as well as pay you.
- HGV Driver AccountantsFor drivers who do not own the truck: employed, agency, umbrella or working through their own limited company.
Sources
This page was written from the official guidance below. Rules and figures change, so check the source before acting on anything here.
- Apply for a vehicle operator licence: financial evidence (opens in a new tab)GOV.UK · checked 2026-08-03
- Goods vehicle operator licensing guide (opens in a new tab)GOV.UK · checked 2026-08-03
- VAT on freight transport and associated services (Notice 744B) (opens in a new tab)GOV.UK · checked 2026-08-03
- PAYE and payroll for employers (opens in a new tab)GOV.UK · checked 2026-08-03
- EIM66205: lorry drivers, overnight subsistence allowance (opens in a new tab)HMRC Employment Income Manual · checked 2026-08-03
- Corporation Tax (opens in a new tab)GOV.UK · checked 2026-08-03
Last reviewed
A Fixed Quote for the Truck or the Fleet
Tell us how many vehicles you run, whether you are a sole trader or a limited company, and what is outstanding. We reply by email with a fixed price and the dates the work has to be finished by.
- A fixed fee agreed before any work starts
- Nothing charged until you accept the quote
- We tell you if you do not need what you asked for
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