MANSEL DAVIES & SON, based in Llanfyrnach near Crymych, is the focus of a brand new S4C documentary which airs later this month.
The new six-part documentary series, Lorïau Mansel Davies a’i Fab, starting on Wednesday, January 18 on S4C (English subtitles available), demonstrates how the company remains very much a family business and the emphasis is on employing local people in the Pembrokeshire area.
The company has kept going in one form or another since 1875 and has been a goods and freight supplier since 1900, initially with horse and cart and then increasingly by lorry. These days, using the latest logistics technology, it has a fleet of over 150 lorries and employs 300 people in its HQ and other locations.
And, as the Tinopolis production team found out, the company is full of colourful characters who combine hard work and utter professionalism with a great deal of humour, leg pulling and the milk of human kindness.
The company is headed by Stephen Davies, although his 80-year-old father Kaye Mansel Davies still has more than a say in the running of the yard!
The family own a number of companies in all, but the freight business is the mainstay, and the lorries are a regular site on Wales’ winding ways.
Stephen Davies says: “We are now into the sixth generation of Davieses involved in the business and we want to keep the business within the family. We employ most of our staff from a 25-mile radius of the village and some of our employees are into the third generation of families working for us.
“This is a 365-day-a-year business, carrying all kinds of freight throughout the UK and Europe, so we all work hard. We carry milk from some 400 farms and take them in articulated lorries to processing plants all over the country.”
In the series, viewers will follow the lorry drivers on their journeys, see how the staff cope on Christmas Day and join in Kaye Mansel’s 80th birthday celebrations.
You will get to know the Davies family, Stephen’s wife, Siân, daughter Sasha and son Scott, who all work for the business. Staff camaraderie is pretty evident too, as we meet colourful lorry drivers such as Alan George and Dai Hands, and a host of staff, from schedulers to welders and technicians.
Lorry driver Alan George says: “My dad was a transport manager with the company for many years and that’s how I got involved. It’s a good company and driving is in my blood. Being a lorry driver can be a lonely life and the worst thing is that I’ve missed out on some parts of my son’s upbringing but once you’re behind the wheel and the adrenaline starts flowing you are hooked to it.”
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