Logistics and freight
Sectors
A transport office is judged on two things: whether the load moved, and whether the paperwork behind it can be produced afterwards. The second has grown considerably faster than the first, and it runs on clocks measured in hours.
The state of the industry
The declarations arrived faster than the desks to file them.
HMRC has put a price on it. Its own estimate of the administrative burden on traders for import and export customs declarations on Great Britain to European Union trade in 2022 was one point eight billion pounds, across thirty-eight point six million declarations. That is roughly forty-eight pounds of administration for every declaration filed.
Then the volume rose. Since 31 January 2025 every consignment imported from the European Union into Great Britain has needed a safety and security declaration, and the carrier moving accompanied goods is the party legally responsible for lodging it. The government’s own impact assessment for that change expected an additional seventeen million declarations a year, at a net cost to business of one hundred and sixty-eight million pounds annually.
These are not desk jobs with a week to run. An entry summary declaration is due one hour before arrival at Coquelles for the Channel Tunnel, two hours before a roll-on roll-off arrival, and twenty-four hours before loading for maritime containerised freight. Where an amendment is needed later, the original still has to have been filed on time.
Behind the border, the operator licence runs its own clocks and they do not align with each other. Maintenance records are kept for fifteen months, drivers’ hours records for twelve, working time records for twenty-four. Driver card data is downloaded at least every twenty-eight days and vehicle unit data at least every ninety. Changes of transport manager, operating centre or legal entity are notifiable to the Traffic Commissioner within twenty-eight days.
The regulator has even published the hours. The Senior Traffic Commissioner’s statutory guidance sets out a starting point of twenty to thirty hours a week of transport management for a fleet of fifteen to twenty-nine vehicles, and full time beyond thirty. The standard it is measuring against is continuous and effective management, which is precisely the thing that fails when the office is one person deep.
The provenance
One of us grew up in this industry.
The Hallaçi family businesses move freight across the Balkans, and have for a long time. It is where the partnership learned that a schedule is the product, the paperwork follows the lorry, and an operation is judged on the day it runs badly rather than the day it runs well.
The work
- Customs and border documentation. Entry summary and customs declarations prepared and lodged against your deadlines, not after them.
- Tachograph and operator licence records. Driver card and vehicle unit downloads on cycle, records retained to their separate statutory periods, infringements logged and put in front of the transport manager.
- Scheduling and booking support. Bookings taken and confirmed, slots managed, and the day’s plan kept current as it changes.
- Proof of delivery and claims. PODs chased, matched and filed, with damage and delay reservations raised inside the seven and twenty-one day windows the CMR Convention allows.
- Invoicing and self-billing reconciliation. Self-billed invoices checked against the movement, agreements kept current, and queries resolved before they age.
- Carrier and customer correspondence. The traffic that fills a transport office inbox, answered in your name, including outside office hours where the engagement calls for it.
The software stays yours
Your TMS, your customs platform and your tachograph analysis stay exactly where they are. Our people work inside them on accounts you issue, rather than asking an operation to migrate mid-week. Which systems, and which parts of them, is settled in the engagement.
What changes for your team
Your transport manager spends the week managing transport rather than filing evidence of having managed it. The declarations go in ahead of the clock, the retention periods look after themselves, and the claims window is met while the file is still fresh.
The economics
Set out in the assessment, seat by seat, where they can be given context.