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From Humble Beginnings

AET Transport was formed in 1977, by my father Mr Alan Trotter.  Having worked for Meggitt Machine Tools.  A large machine tool distributor from 1968.  In that year they decided that they wanted to sub contract their deliveries and sold the existing lorries to the drivers, therefore AET Transport was born.

I joined my father in early 1981 to assist in siting machinery around the UK at Educational and Health Authorities, in late 1981 when the recession hit the UK, the contract with Meggitt was cancelled, this meant that we had to start again working from home, to find work.  It was decided at this time the only way to succeed would be to offer a good reliable service  By offering this service we developed a small amount of what can only be described as loyal, trusting customers.  We worked hard to achieve this and expanded through the 1980’s and 90’s.  growing from one to ten lorries and I always believed the only way to grow is to keep re investing in the company and workforce.  This investment has allowed us to buy the most modern and flexible equipment.

We now have eighteen vehicles with the capacity to lift and transport equipment from 1.5tons to a domestic to 80ton special type vehicles.  We have hydraulic jacking equipment (Mega Lift) up to 600ton capacity and have three Versa-lift fork lift trucks amongst our vast range, consisting of sixteen in total.

It was decided in 2002 by my father for me to take over the reigns of the company, the following year we started Dorset Crane Hire.  This was felt to be a good addition to the business as we could further improve the services we offer.  This has intern expanded and now has seven mobile cranes with an average age of three years old, with a capacity from 8 to 95ton lifting. 

The company has now been trading for over 30years and I’m pleased to say is still growing from its humble beginnings.

In early 2008 we will be moving into a 4 acre site with 20,000 sq ft of storage facility giving us more room to expand and give my son, the next generation greater opportunities for the future.

Over the years we have been entrusted with some large projects and have worked in such places as Canada, America, Israel, china, we regularly work in main land Europe and take vehicles there most weeks.  The most complicated job completed in recent years was the movement and siting of the Autoclave at Airbus, Broughton, Nr Chester, we were contacted by Aeroform Ltd, the manufactures with literally a drawing on a cigarette pack and asked “would this be possible to move” it consisted of three sections approx 12m long, 5m wide and weighing 100 – 120 ton each.  Working with a heavy haulage company GCS Johnson Ltd, we undertook a site survey from the proposed manufactures in Lincoln to Immingham Port and the route from Ellesmere Port to Broughton. This was the start 18 months negotiations and final agreement with all the local authorities.  We collected all three sections from Lincoln moved them to Immingham and loaded onto a vessel, it took four days to sail to Ellesmere Port where it arrived on the Saturday morning, with the help of a 500ton crane, we off loaded the sections and placed them onto the trailers.  The next day leaving at 5am we started the 26 mile journey, we had the three large loads, one spare tractor unit, three support vehicles, 85 BT engineers, 35 electrical engineers, 8 national grid engineers, 9 police cars and 15 engineers from the local councils.  We arrived at Broughton at 9.30pm, at one point we only had 100mm clearance under the M56 Motorway Bridge.

After we had to steel plate the actual roundabout as we would not fit under the Motorway Bridge, the following day we had to off load the sections outside the building and place back onto a 10 row trailer due to the slope into the building once inside a second hydraulic jacking system was used to lift off the trailer and place into position over the pit area, all three sections were positioned over a two day period.  Personnel were on site for a further two weeks to assist in lifting, as each of the sections were welded together and finally lifting the whole 320ton and placing onto its  support feet.  The crew were on site for a further two weeks, placing the motors and siting the door. With the street furniture bill the whole contract was under   £ 650,000.              

Andrew Trotter

Managing Director