Established in the early 1900s as A.M. Widdowson and Son, the Widdowson Group haulage business worked as a very local company moving coal within the Leicester area. By the late 1980s the company expanded into an organisation that was providing services throughout the whole of Great Britain. Today they operate through six separate trading divisions: logistics warehousing, contract packing, transport, freight forwarding, pallet repair, garage services and a commercial training academy.
Divisions
;Traffic : Road transport is the biggest Division of The Widdowson Group with a fleet with over 130 vehicles, most being Scania some being Iveco. The fleet extends from panic vans to 44 tonne artics and includes over 200 trailers. The division operates as two functions "Groupage" and "Full Loads". Full Loads is where an entire vehicle is loaded for a single purpose, usually a single delivery. Groupage works on the basis of multi-client and multi-drops for a vehicle. ;Warehouse : The Warehouse Division based over several sites and rivals the Traffic Division for the biggest turnover. The Widdowson Group have three warehouse sites operating over 700,000 sq. ft. of warehousing offering dedicated or shared user storage facilities in racked or bulk configuration on a contractual or short term basis. The warehouse systems utilise EDI solutions with integrated RF and Barcode scanning in their WMS supplied by Road Tech. Widdowson Group often tailor warehousing solutions to the customers they are dealing with, for historical customer PepsiCo the Widdowson Group dedicated a whole warehouse for that client. Where as the warehousing service offered to United Biscuits was that they stored pallets of their products goods amongst other customer's pallets. ;Freight : The Freight Office offers a range of international services such as import, export and bonded warehousing. ;Garage : Originally established to maintain and service Widdowson's own fleet of vehicles and trailers, the Garage Division is now an established commercial vehicle center. The Widdowson Group also offers personal car repairs for friends and family of the Widdowson Group. ;Contract Pack : This is the fastest growing Division of the Widdowson Group concentrating on added value tasks such as the repackaging, barcoding, inspection and labeling of goods. An example of the Contract Packing operation is when the Widdowson Group package Christmas gift-packs for Boots UK, the Contract Packing department takes the raw products and packs them into a decorative gift box along with extra gift items like socks. ;Training : The Commercial Training Academy offer LGV C, C+E courses and FLT training to both paying public looking to start a new career, private companies looking to develop internal staff and internally to train and retrain staff. One of the main focuses of the internal aspect of the training department is to improve the lorry drivers' emissions. ;Pallet Repair: The Widdowson Group generates a profit from a pallet repair operation, where teams of its staff repair damaged pallets to be used again.
Locations
Glenfield, Leicester.
Braunstone, Leicester
Bardon, Coalville.
Memberships and Affiliates
, UKWA, RHA, BIFA, BCMPA, RMIF, DSA Widdowson Group have been executive box holders at Leicester City F.C. since the 1990s and are one of the longest serving executive box holders at the club. Widdowson Group were part of the consortium of 55 parties led by Gary Lineker who invested money to rescue the club from Administration in 2003.
