F ew general hauliers can claim to have a secure future.
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Even fewer need top security clearance from the Ministry of Defence. Hampshire-based L Hunt & Son has the first, partly because it needs the second.
These days, a Hunt vehicle is just as likely to be carrying radar and communications equipment for the Government as it is to be delivering a load of steel or air conditioning equipment.
In addition to playing a significant role in the present day company's activities, military connections were instrumental in establishing the original business of 41/J Hunt and Sons.
Its first haulage job was to carry a single heifer by cart to Basingstoke market but the company soon progressed to collecting hay from the local farms and delivering it to the military establishments at Aldershot in the days when the army had more horses than trucks.
Fast forward to the 1980s and Hunt vehicles were playing their part in preparations for the Falklands conflict, carrying munitions to the ships of the departing task force.
Connections
Such fighting connections sit well with a company which has survived by switching its attack to new markets whenever competition rendered existing profit margins unacceptable. We're a company which will look at a new market, see what people want and try to provide a service to match it," says transport director Ivan Hunt.
For example, until 15 years ago, regular livestock runs to Portugal, France, Italy and Spain were the company's bread and butter. Falling rates encouraged the company to concentrate on the UK market.
Competition in the UK market was becoming just as tough but that lost international revenue which was initially replaced by exploiting business opportunities in the construction industry. The company has long been a carrier of stone and raw materials for road building, using that accumulated knowledge to establish first a plant hire business and then a ground works arm.
Construction interests expanded with the additions of brick trailers with mid-mounted cranes, and then through the addition of a lorry loader to the fleet.
However, the livestock business was sold eight years ago and when the bottom fell out of the construction market in the late 1980s the plant and ground works operations were also closed down, although the lorry loader work is still very much a part of the company's activities.
Today the company specialises in storage and distribution contracts of air conditioning equipment and white goods, as well as the collection and delivery of forklift trucks made by German-owned manufacturer Lansing-Linde, based in Basingstoke.
But just as it has retained its early military connections, agricultural contact is maintained through a Wool Marketing Board contract to collect wool from local farms.
That's probably the only kind of fleecing that the Ministry will allow its securitycleared hauliers to indulge in...