A SMALL village in west Wales may not be the most likely location for one of Wales’ most important lorry freight companies but when you go to the HQ of Mansel Davies & Son in Llanfyrnach, near Crymych, you know you’re entering a well-oiled business.

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, seen by motorists on the main roads through Ceredigion on a regular basis, and employs 300 people in its HQ and other locations.

But as TV viewers see in the new six-part documentary series Lorïau Mansel Davies a’i Fab, starting on Wednesday on S4C (English subtitles available), the company remains very much a family business and the emphasis is on employing local people.

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!

Stephen said: “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."

Read the full story in this week’s Cambrian News, available in shops and online now