Our history
In the early part of the last century the Langdons were farmers and trappers in West Somerset. The family was led by the formidable Bessie Langdon who built up a successful business trading in rabbit, poultry and egg products. In 1955 the company diversified into road haulage when Tone Vale Transport was formed.
Philip Langdon along with his brother William developed the road haulage business in the late 50’s and 60’s. During this period the company diversified into refrigerated haulage by creating Taunton Meat Haulage. By the early 1970’s Langdons interests included warehousing and cold storage as well as the two growing haulage firms and a Mercedes-Benz car dealership.
William Langdon died in 1967 but Philip Langdon continued developing the business until 1974 when he sold out to TKM Ltd who named the group of companies they had bought as Langdon Industries Ltd. Philip Langdon was retained as managing director and the company prospered under its new owners throughout the remainder of the 70’s. By 1980 Philip Langdon was nearing retirement and became the part-time Chairman so TKM appointed Mike Donoghue as managing director. In 1983 Mr Langdon retired from the business.
In 1985 TKM decided to sell all their transport subsidiaries and the directors led by Mike Donoghue took the opportunity to buy the company, which was achieved in April 1986. It was decided at that time to retain the Langdon trading name. The company image was however completely re-designed and the now familiar arrow trademark emerged from that process.
In 1996 the ChillNet brand name was established to represent the Chilled & Frozen network - a partnership formed between Langdons and a number of UK & Irish hauliers. In 1997 the decision was made to withdraw from general haulage and focus on the temperature controlled side of the business. Chillnet continued to grow with a new depot opened in Peterborough in 2000. In early 2002 our trading partner Tom Granby (Liverpool) Ltd was sold to DBC Foodservice. Shortly after that in October 2002 their transport operations at Liverpool & Luton were transferred to Langdons.
In 2004 Langdons was purchased by the Nagel Group of Versmold, Germany. During this period the business grew substantially focusing on the core business - our UK Chilled & Frozen distribution network. Nagel's Dover depot joined our network along with new depots which opened in Redditch (2004), Barnsley (2010), Redditch replacement (2011), Motherwell (2014) and Liverpool replacement (2019)
In 2021 STEF group purchased Nagel Langdons from Nagel Group and our trading name changed to STEF Langdons Ltd.
New STEF Langdons livery launched and begins appearing on Trucks, Trailers and signage.