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We are proud to announce an important milestone in Fork Truck Direct’s future: the majority of shares in our business are now held in an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT), for the benefit of our employees.
For our customers, this means continuity: the same independent British business, familiar relationships and commitment to quality. For our team, it creates a shared interest in the company’s future and a greater opportunity to benefit from the success they help deliver.
Alongside this transition, we have strengthened our management structure to support the next generation of leadership, preserve the experience within our business and create a clear foundation for long-term growth.
What Is an Employee Ownership Trust?
An Employee Ownership Trust holds a controlling shareholding in a company on behalf of its employees. Rather than employees buying and holding individual shares, the trust holds those shares collectively for their benefit.
At Fork Truck Direct, this means the majority ownership of the business is now held in trust for the people whose expertise, hard work and customer relationships underpin our success.
Our directors and management team continue to lead the business and take responsibility for its performance. The EOT provides an ownership structure that places the long-term interests of employees at the heart of that future.
Why Employee Ownership Is Right for Fork Truck Direct
As a family business, we have always taken a personal approach to our work. Our reputation has been built through lasting relationships, practical advice and a willingness to take responsibility for the products and services we provide.
Choosing our next ownership structure meant considering how best to protect those strengths.
Employee ownership allows us to preserve our family-business values while remaining an independent, British-owned company with local knowledge and local decision-making. That independence is an important part of our competitive edge. It allows us to respond quickly to customers, adapt our product offering and invest where the market requires.
Whether we are helping a customer move to lithium electric forklifts, supporting a growing fleet or improving our service capabilities, we want decisions to remain close to the people who understand the work.
The EOT supports that approach while maintaining the principles our customers respect and appreciate: honest communication, accountability, quality workmanship and dependable support.
Giving Our People a Stake in Our Success
Our employees create the value our customers experience every day. Engineers, controllers, workshop teams, parts specialists, salespeople and support staff all contribute to the strength of Fork Truck Direct.
Employee ownership gives that contribution a clearer connection to the commercial success of the business.
Our ambition is to support long-term employment, create more opportunities for training and career progression, and build a business in which growth delivers benefits for the people helping to achieve it.
The financial opportunities include:
- An annual bonus free of Income Tax: The EOT structure enables qualifying bonus payments for each employee each tax year, subject to the applicable rules. National Insurance contributions still apply, and payments depend on business performance and the agreed bonus arrangements.
- Working towards a profit-sharing scheme: We are working towards unlocking a sustainable scheme that allows eligible employees to share further in the profits they help generate, while maintaining the investment needed to keep the business strong.
- A potential share in future sale value: Employees now have a collective beneficial interest through the trust. If the business were acquired in the future, eligible employees could benefit from a distribution of sale proceeds, subject to the trust’s rules, outstanding obligations and applicable tax.
These opportunities sit alongside an equally important commitment: developing our people. Better skills, stronger management and clear opportunities to progress will help us build a more capable business and a more rewarding place to work.
A Management Structure Built for the Future
Our transition to employee ownership has coincided with a planned evolution of our leadership structure.
Mike Dixon and Stephen Culham have played central roles in building Fork Truck Direct. The next stage is about preserving that knowledge and those relationships while reducing the business’s reliance on their presence in daily operations.
Ashley Dixon and Thomas Culham are taking greater responsibility across complementary areas of the business, supported by an experienced management team.
Ashley Dixon, Finance & Operations Director, oversees financial management and operational delivery. His role brings together financial discipline, resource planning and the coordination needed to ensure the business can fulfil its commitments and invest sustainably.
Thomas Culham, Commercial Director, leads commercial development across sales, marketing, service and parts, with a focus on customer relationships, product strategy, management development and business performance. His role connects our growth ambitions with the quality of the customer experience we deliver.
Together, these roles provide clearer accountability and continuity of leadership, allowing Mike and Stephen’s experience to support the business without requiring their involvement in every operational decision.
Turning Experience into Long-Term Improvement
We are also directing the experience of Darrin Jones and Stan Kidney towards a sustained programme of improvement.
Darrin Jones, Service Support Manager, focuses on supporting and mentoring our service managers, developing useful performance information and identifying opportunities to improve how the department works. With day-to-day responsibility sitting with our North and South service managers, Darrin can dedicate more time to strengthening processes, developing management capability and helping improvements become established working practices.
Stan Kidney, Safety and Compliance Manager, supports the long-term development of safe working practices, clear standards and effective compliance across the business. His role helps ensure that growth is supported by the right procedures, equipment and safeguards for our people and customers.
Working alongside the wider management team, their focus will be on practical improvements that deliver lasting benefits: better planning, stronger technical capability, fewer avoidable delays, more consistent service and a better working environment.
The objective is to improve efficiency, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction together.
What This Means for Our Customers
For our customers, employee ownership reinforces our commitment to being a dependable, independent partner for the long term.
You will continue to work with a business that understands its local markets, values personal relationships and has the freedom to recommend solutions suited to your operation.
By giving employees a shared interest in our future, we are strengthening the connection between the service they deliver and the success of the company. Our aim is for that shared commitment to translate into greater ownership of problems, continued investment in expertise and an even more consistent customer experience.
We offer premium products and service, and our responsibility is to deliver the quality, care and value that customers should expect from that commitment.
A Shared Future for Fork Truck Direct
Becoming employee owned is a significant step in protecting what makes Fork Truck Direct distinctive while preparing the business for its next stage of growth.
It brings together the values of our family-business heritage, the continuity of an experienced leadership team and a shared stake for our employees.
We would like to thank our customers, suppliers and colleagues for their continued support. We look forward to building this next chapter together.