Boat & Small Boat Transport

Two quite different jobs go by the same name.

If your boat is already on a road-legal trailer, the job is towing. We hitch up and tow the whole outfit to wherever it's going, which is quicker and cheaper. The boat never has to be lifted, and nothing touches the hull that wasn't touching it already.

If there's no trailer, or the trailer isn't fit for the road, the boat goes on the flatbed instead. That means supporting it properly — a hull sat on a hard bed without cradling is asking for a stress crack, particularly on an older GRP boat.

So the first question when you ring isn't really about the boat. It's whether there's a trailer, and what state it's in.

Boat trailers spend most of their lives standing still, often outdoors, and are frequently reversed into salt water twice a season. They fail more often than the boats they carry.

Bearings are the classic. A trailer that's been dunked and left will seize a hub, and the first anyone knows is a wheel getting hot ten miles into the journey. If yours hasn't turned a wheel in a couple of years, say so — we'd far rather check it cold than deal with it at the roadside.

Tyres are the other one. Trailer tyres perish long before they wear out, and a tyre with plenty of tread and eight years of cracked sidewall is not a tyre. Lights and the number plate matter too, because both are legally required and both spend their lives underwater.

None of that stops us moving your boat. It just changes which of the two jobs it is, and it's much better established on the phone than on your driveway.

We're set up for small craft. RIBs, day boats, fishing boats, dinghies, jet skis and trailer sailers — the sort of thing that legally travels on a road trailer behind a car — are all normal work.

The limit is the same 3.5 tonnes that applies to everything else we carry, and with boats the width matters as much as the weight. Anything over about 2.55 metres wide needs abnormal load procedures, notifications and often an escort. That's a specialist business and it isn't ours.

Narrowboats and yachts are a firm no. A narrowboat is fifty feet of steel that moves on a specialist low-loader with a crane at each end, and a masted yacht brings its own set of problems. If that's what you have, we'll say so on the first call and you'll have lost nothing but two minutes.

Where a boat is coming from is usually more awkward than where it's going.

Marinas have gates, opening hours and their own rules about who may drive on the hardstanding, and some want notice before a truck arrives. Winter storage yards are often tight, unsurfaced and shared with a great deal of expensive fibreglass. Slipways range from a solid concrete ramp to a bit of shingle that only works two hours either side of high water.

All of it is manageable, and all of it goes better with a phone number for whoever holds the keys. Give us that when you book and we'll do the arranging. Turning up at a locked marina gate on a Sunday helps nobody.