Cambridgeshire, with regular travel to operating centres in the East of England and the North West | £45,000 to £60,000 (DOE) plus car or car allowance | Transport Manager CPC essential
Most transport manager roles are about keeping the wheels turning. Somebody else decides the shape of the operation and you are measured on running it well. This role is about deciding which wheels you own.
The organisation
A privately owned logistics business, specialising in food and food ingredients, operating from three sites and serving customers who have stayed with it for decades. It runs its own fleet alongside a network of subcontract hauliers, delivering everything from single pallets to full loads, including consolidated deliveries into major grocery retailers on behalf of its clients. The business is profitable, conservatively financed and growing. It has acquired once and intends to acquire again, and it has a stated plan to double the size of the operation over the next three years.
The opportunity
The fleet and the subcontract network have grown up separately. The northern operation runs largely on owned vehicles, having come into the business through acquisition. The southern operation, which is where you will be based, runs largely on subcontract haulage and has done for years. The two halves work, but nobody has yet stood back and asked whether that is the right shape for a business of this size with the ambitions it has. That question is yours to answer. You will own the balance between running the work and buying it in, across the entire network, and you will have the authority and the backing to change it.
The role and its remit
You will run transport as a commercial operation rather than as a service function, which is a genuine change from how it has been managed historically. You will hold real accountability for cost and for margin, and you will be expected to understand and improve cost per drop, cost per pallet and cost per mile rather than simply reporting them.
You will integrate transport across three operating centres so that planning, standards and reporting are finally consistent, working with planning resource at more than one location and building relationships with site management teams you will not see every day. You will select, negotiate with and manage the subcontract haulier network, holding partners to proper service measurement and ensuring they meet the same compliance and food safety standards as the owned fleet. You will lead the planning and administration teams, and you will need credibility with a driver population as well as with an office.
On compliance you will work alongside an established function covering licence undertakings, drivers' hours, tachograph analysis and maintenance records, and you will be named as a Transport Manager on the operator licence. The compliance record is clean, and the expectation is that you keep it that way.
The challenge, in practical terms
The single clearest opportunity is utilisation. The vehicles run efficiently, the drivers are fairly paid, and the operation is run lean. What remains is empty running, and everybody in the business knows it. Improving backloads and return leg utilisation is where you will make your most visible early impact, and your six- and twelve-month targets will be agreed with you rather than handed to you. Beyond that sits the wider question of network shape: which lanes should move to owned vehicles, which should stay on subcontract, whether pallet network use has a place, and what the fleet should look like as the business grows. Maintenance is moving toward manufacturer contracts, which changes the economics again. The third part is growth, and it is the part most transport roles never reach. The business intends to double the size of its logistics operation over the next three years, and transport is central to that. You will be expected to extend what the operation can offer and where it can reach, opening lanes and service capability the business cannot currently sell, and working alongside the commercial team to turn that into won business. That means being in front of customers when it matters, pricing new work with confidence, and telling the commercial team what is genuinely deliverable rather than what sounds good.
The person we are looking for
You are a multi-site transport manager, ideally from a haulier or a third-party logistics business where transport is run commercially and expected to contribute rather than simply to deliver. Own account experience is welcome alongside that, but a career spent entirely in own account transport, where the fleet exists purely to serve the business, will be a stretch in a role built around the buy or run decision. You hold the Transport Manager CPC, and you are willing to be named on the operator licence. You have genuine experience of managing subcontract hauliers, which means choosing them, negotiating rates with them and holding them to account when service slips, not simply booking them when you are short of vehicles.
Your compliance knowledge is sound and current across drivers hours, tachographs, working time and maintenance, and you are comfortable using transport and telematics data to make decisions rather than waiting for somebody to produce a report. You are also comfortable on the commercial side of transport. You can sit with a customer, understand what they actually need, price it properly and commit to it, and you see the commercial team as a partner rather than as people who sell things you then have to deliver.
Track record
We are looking for evidence you have improved something and can explain how. Cost taken out, margin protected, utilisation lifted, empty running reduced, a subcontract network rationalised or a rate structure renegotiated. If you have integrated transport operations across sites following an acquisition or taken a function that was run as a cost centre and made it commercial, that is precisely the experience this role calls for. We are equally interested in where you have helped a business grow rather than simply run better. Lanes or services you have opened up, capability you have added that the sales team could then sell, customers you have helped win or retain because of what transport could do, or a network you extended into territory the business could not previously serve. If you have worked closely with a commercial team and understand what that partnership needs from your side, say so, because it matters here.
Personality and fit
This is a privately owned business with a flat structure and no regional management layer to work through. You will have direct access to the people who make decisions, and decisions tend to be made quickly. That suits somebody who wants ownership and finds corporate process frustrating, and it does not suit somebody who wants a defined remit and a central function to escalate into. You will need to hold standards at sites you are not standing in every day, which requires a particular kind of discipline: a clear rhythm of contact, visible presence when it matters, and the confidence to have a direct conversation at distance. You will also need to be commercially firm with haulier partners while preserving relationships the business genuinely depends on. The workforce is long serving and takes real pride in the operation. Credibility here comes from knowing the job, being straight with people and being visible, rather than from the job title. The business is growing and wants somebody who finds that energising rather than unsettling. If your instinct on being asked whether transport could serve a new region or handle a different kind of work is to look at whether it can be made to pay rather than to explain why it cannot, you will fit here.
The package
£45,000 to £60,000 depending on experience and on what you bring, plus car or car allowance, pension and benefits.
The process and how to apply
Apply with your CV. We will brief you fully on the business, the operation and the role before anything is shared with our client, and nothing is passed on without your agreement
Salary description
£45000.00 - £60000.00 per year