A haulier pays for diesel the moment the tank is filled and pays drivers every Friday. The customer pays the invoice in 30, 60, sometimes 90 days. That mismatch is the single most predictable cash-flow problem in road transport, and it has nothing to do with whether the business is profitable. A growing haulier with a full order book can run out of cash precisely because it is winning work: every new load consumes fuel and wages now and pays back two months later. The fix is funding the receivables, not adding more debt against the trucks.
Why the gap is structurally worse in haulage
Most B2B sectors carry a cash gap. Haulage carries an unusually nasty version of it, for reasons specific to how the work is paid for.
The two biggest cost lines, fuel and drivers, are the two that cannot wait. Diesel is paid on the fuel card within days of the fill, often weekly. Drivers are paid weekly or fortnightly, not monthly, because the labour market for HGV drivers will not tolerate a 30-day wait. Tolls, Dart Charge, and clean-air-zone charges land continuously. So the costs that dominate a haulier's P&L are also the fastest to leave the bank, while the revenue is the slowest to arrive.
Fuel-price volatility makes it sharper still. Diesel duty has been held at 52.95 pence per litre under the extended 5 pence cut, but that relief is set to unwind from September 2026, with duty stepping up over the following months and the prospect of inflation-linked rises after that. A haulier on fixed-rate customer contracts cannot reprice overnight when pump prices jump, so a fuel spike hits the cash position before any rate review catches up. The faster fuel costs move, the wider the gap between cash out and cash in, and the more working capital the same volume of work suddenly demands.
Invoice finance that fits how hauliers actually invoice
The instrument built for this is invoice finance, and used well it converts the trade-debtor ledger into same-week cash. The funder advances a large share of each invoice, commonly up to around 90 percent, often within 24 hours of the invoice being raised, and releases the balance, less their charge, when the customer pays. The cost is typically a service fee plus a discount charge that runs at a margin over the Bank of England base rate, calculated daily on the funds drawn. The mechanics are standard. What matters in haulage is the detail underneath them.
Customer concentration is the first thing a funder reads. A haulier running most of its volume for one large customer is a different, riskier file than one with a spread of debtors, and the advance rate and bad-debt terms will reflect that. The debtor mix is read as carefully as the headline turnover.
Recourse is the second. With recourse factoring, the funder advances against the invoice but can reclaim the money if the customer never pays; it is cheaper but leaves the bad-debt risk with you. Non-recourse adds bad-debt protection, the funder absorbs an insolvent debtor, and you pay a premium for it. The trap is the small print: most non-recourse cover responds to a customer going insolvent, not to one who simply disputes the load and refuses to pay. In haulage, where claims over damaged goods, late delivery, or short loads are routine, that distinction decides whether the protection is worth anything. Read what triggers the cover before you pay for it.
The structure also has to handle how freight is actually billed. Hauliers running sub-contractors, working through pallet networks, or invoicing on self-bill arrangements need a facility that copes with back-to-back payments and high invoice volumes rather than one designed for a manufacturer raising a few large invoices a month. Some haulage-focused providers integrate fuel-card data and credit control into the facility, so the funding line and the biggest cost line are managed together rather than in separate silos.
Don't solve a cash-flow problem with balance-sheet debt
The instinct when cash is tight is to borrow against the fleet, raise a sale-and-leaseback, or take a term loan. For the fuel-and-wages gap, that is usually the wrong tool, and here is the reasoning rather than a both-sides shrug.
The gap is recurring and self-liquidating: every load creates a receivable that pays out in weeks. A facility that flexes with the ledger, advancing more as you invoice more and less when volumes drop, matches that shape. A fixed term loan does not. It hands you a lump sum, charges interest on the whole balance whether you need it or not, and has to be repaid on a schedule that ignores your billing cycle. Worse, gearing the trucks to cover an operating gap consumes the asset headroom you will want later for a genuine capital event, a contract start, an acquisition, a fleet upgrade.
Two situations justify a term product alongside the receivables line. A short, unsecured cashflow loan can bridge a specific, dated event, the working capital to mobilise a new contract before the first invoices are raised and the invoice facility kicks in. And a larger operator combining a debtor book, fuel-card balances, and stock can pull the lot into one revolving facility through asset-based lending, which gives a single line that scales with the business instead of a stack of separate agreements. For the everyday gap between paying for diesel and getting paid for the load, the receivables are the asset to fund, and Bedrock places most transport and logistics working-capital files exactly there.