How Much Does an Accountant Cost for a Haulage Company in the UK 2026/27?

The short answer: what a haulage accountant costs

A UK haulage company pays from about £79 a month for a single-vehicle limited company up to roughly £400 to £600 a month for a multi-vehicle fleet with drivers on payroll and VAT. The single biggest driver of the number is how many vehicles and drivers you run, because each driver adds payroll and each truck adds capital allowance, VAT and cost-per-mile work.

Those are real working ranges, not a sales line. A man with one van and a Transit-weight operation under the 3.5 tonne threshold sits at the bottom. A road haulage operator with a yard, a dozen artics and fifteen drivers on the books sits at the top, and frankly should, because the work behind a fleet of that size is a different job entirely. Most independent hauliers we speak to are somewhere in the middle and assume they are paying a fair price when they have never seen the number broken down.

If you want the specialist context behind these figures, our transport and logistics accountants page sets out how we price by vehicle and driver count, and our annual accounts and Corporation Tax service covers the year-end work every limited company haulier needs. For a quick sense of where the fee tiers sit, here are the anchor numbers.

What the fee should actually include

A proper haulage accountancy fee covers your annual accounts and Corporation Tax, monthly bookkeeping, VAT returns, driver payroll, and the management figures you need to run the fleet and renew your operator licence. If a quote only mentions "year-end accounts", you are buying half a service.

Break it into the parts that matter for a transport business. The annual accounts and Corporation Tax return are the legal minimum every limited company files. Bookkeeping is where a haulier either wins or loses, because fuel, tyres, repairs, tolls, AdBlue and finance payments all need coding correctly so your cost per mile is real. VAT returns matter because most hauliers are well over the £90,000 threshold and reclaiming input VAT on diesel and repairs is significant money. Driver payroll through PAYE brings the National Minimum Wage, the 15 percent employer National Insurance and auto-enrolment pension into play for every person you employ.

Then there is the part generalists skip. A haulage company has to prove financial standing to the Traffic Commissioner to hold its goods vehicle operator licence, and that is a continuing requirement, not a one-off at application. Management accounts and a clean set of figures make that test painless. You can see the official requirement on the gov.uk operator licence financial evidence guidance. An accountant who has never mentioned it is not thinking about your business the way you do.

How fleet size changes the monthly fee

Fleet size is the main lever on price, because cost rises with every driver on payroll and every vehicle in the capital allowance pool. A single-vehicle operator is a light-touch job. A fifteen-truck fleet with night trunking and agency drivers is a monthly management exercise.

Here is roughly how the all-in monthly fee scales across the three sizes we see most often. These are typical figures and the exact quote always depends on transaction volume, how many drivers are on the books and whether you want monthly or quarterly management accounts.

The five things that move a haulage firm's bill

Five factors decide where your fee lands: the number of vehicles, the number of drivers on payroll, your VAT position, whether you run internationally, and how much management reporting you need. Everything else is detail.

Number of vehicles drives the capital allowance and cost-per-mile work. Number of drivers drives payroll, because every employee means National Minimum Wage checks, the 15 percent employer National Insurance above the £5,000 secondary threshold, and an auto-enrolment pension. VAT adds quarterly returns and, for a haulier, real reclaim value on diesel and repairs. International work brings zero-rating and place-of-supply questions that a domestic-only firm never touches. And the more you want to actually steer the business with monthly management accounts, the more hands-on the engagement becomes.

Road haulage accountant fees: the build-up for a small fleet

It helps to see the fee assembled from its parts rather than as one mysterious number. The waterfall below shows how a four-driver small-fleet engagement builds from the core compliance work up to a working monthly figure, before any bespoke advisory.

Is a specialist worth it for a haulage firm?

For most haulage companies, yes, because the reliefs a generalist misses usually dwarf the fee. The classic example is the truck. An HGV is plant and machinery, so it qualifies for the Annual Investment Allowance and gets 100 percent tax relief in the year you buy it, up to the £1 million cap. A car bought by the same business is excluded from the AIA and only gets slow writing down allowances, so getting that split right is real money.

We break the truck versus car maths down fully in our guide to the Annual Investment Allowance on an HGV versus a car, and if you operate as a sole trader owner-driver rather than a limited company, our piece on how much an accountant costs for a lorry driver covers the simpler end. A generalist who pools a £45,000 tractor unit as if it were a company car can delay tens of thousands of relief by a decade.

Beyond capital allowances, a specialist reclaims VAT on fuel, repairs and the operator licence properly, runs driver payroll without tripping the National Minimum Wage on long shifts, and presents accounts that satisfy the Traffic Commissioner. Corporation Tax sits at 19 percent on profits up to £50,000 and 25 percent above £250,000 with marginal relief between, per the gov.uk Corporation Tax rates, so timing a big vehicle purchase against your profit level genuinely changes the bill. Here is how the three common approaches compare for a transport business.

What this means for you: how to get an accurate quote

To get a quote that reflects your actual business, have five numbers ready: how many vehicles you run, how many drivers are on payroll, whether you are VAT registered, your rough annual turnover, and whether you hold a standard or restricted operator licence. With those, any decent transport accountant can price your situation rather than guess.

A few practical pointers before you sign anything. Ask whether bookkeeping and VAT are included or billed separately, because a low headline fee with everything bolted on à la carte often ends up dearer. Check the firm understands the operator licence financial standing test, currently £8,000 for the first vehicle and £4,500 for each additional vehicle on a standard licence, or £3,100 and £1,700 on a restricted one. And ask how they handle a vehicle purchase mid-year, because the timing of the Annual Investment Allowance against your year end is where a specialist earns the fee back.

None of this is exotic. It is matching the service to the size and shape of your fleet, then pricing it honestly. Get that right and the accountant becomes one of the cheaper line items on your cost-per-mile sheet. Get it wrong and you pay twice: once in fees and again in the reliefs nobody claimed. You can check your own position in a free call with LOYALS and we will tell you, in writing, what your fleet should cost to look after.