The Datum Report

Occupation 1241 · Managers, directors and senior officials

Managers in transport and distribution

Half of full-time managers in transport and distribution in the UK earn more than £47,504 a year, and half earn less.

Managers in transport and distribution plan, organise, and co-ordinate the activities and resources necessary for the safe, efficient and economic movement of passengers and freight by road, rail, sea and air transport.

How people enter it

Candidates are recruited with a variety of academic qualifications and/or with relevant experience. Entrants to management trainee schemes offered by larger companies will require GCSEs/S grades, A levels/H grades, a degree or other equivalent qualifications. Off and on-the-job training is provided. Professional qualifications are available and may be required for some roles. NVQs/SVQs in a number of relevant areas including supply chain and operations management are available at levels 2, 3, 4 and 5.

What the work involves

• plans the optimum utilisation of staff and operating equipment, and co-ordinates maintenance activities to ensure least possible disruption to services
• co-ordinates the transportation of passengers, the movement, handling and storage of freight in transit, and reviews space utilisation, staffing and distribution expenditure to determine future distribution policies
• ensures that regulations regarding hours of work, the licensing of crews and transport equipment, the operational safety and efficiency of equipment, the insurance of vehicles and other statutory regulations are complied with
• ensures that harbour channels and berths are maintained and liaises with ship owners, crew, customs officials, dock and harbour staff to arrange entry, berthing and servicing of ships
• supervises day-to-day activities in a railway station
• arranges for maintenance of airport runways and buildings, liaises with fuel and catering crews to ensure adequate supplies and resolves any complaints and problems raised by airport users

Also called

Distribution service manager · Fleet manager · Operations manager (transport) · Shipping manager · Transport manager

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for managers in transport and distribution, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 9 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Managers in logistics · Managers in storage and warehousing