Hauliers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person or company engaged in the transport of goods, especially by road or rail
2. An entity that provides logistical services involving the movement of freight
3. A business that specializes in the collection and delivery of cargo from diverse locations

Etymology: "Hauliers" is simply the plural of "haulier", a word that took its shape in Middle English, when "halyer" and related spellings appeared as the name for someone who hauled things. The base is the verb "haul", which came into English from the Middle English "halen", meaning to pull or drag by force, and the ending "-ier" marks a person who does that work, as in "carrier" or "courier". The sense has narrowed and grown over the centuries. Early haulage was literal: a man with a cart or team who dragged goods along roads that could barely be called roads. Today the word covers a whole logistics business, from a firm that owns lorries to one that arranges transport for others, and the same job of moving loads has survived even as the machinery changed.

Synonyms: carriers, transporters