A Family Firm

29/10/2019 WebSupport Coaches, Features, Operator Profiles

Based in the small town of Mexborough, in the heart of the former South Yorkshire coalfield, LL Travel is a traditional family-run firm which trades on its reputation for value and quality. Jonathan Welch visited to find out more

Founded in 1990, LL Travel started off the same way as many successful local operators, as one man and his minibus. Then still a school teacher, John Law and wife Janette made the leap after John had worked in his spare time for a number of other local operators. “I started with KM Travel in Barnsley,” said John, “and then worked for Billies in Mexborough too. I did a bit for Gordons over in Rotherham as well. Billies sold out to Gordons, and at around the same time, I started LL Travel. I was still a teacher when I started coach driving, so I did a lot of driving for school trips, we went all over the place. I finished teaching in 1999 to concentrated on running this company. Until then, my wife was doing the day-to-day running and I did the driving. We started off with a 16-seater Freight Rover minibus,” John said. “We’ve come a long way since then,” he continued, having interrupted his bi-monthly digital tachograph downloads to speak to me. “We bought the first minibus brand-new, we have never bought second-hand. To me, you’re buying someone else’s trouble, you have to ask yourself why they got rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, there’s likely something wrong. We always buy new. We’ve just replaced a Euro V with another Euro VI,” he said, joking that there’s nothing wrong with the ones LL Travel gets rid of, of course!