Our History

In 1914 Samuel ‘Sammy’ Jones became a Haulage Contractor in Aldridge, just north of Birmingham and transported his first consignment, reputedly cases of crockery, from Aldridge railway station by horse and cart to the local ‘Manor House’.

By 1920, he had acquired his first motor lorry, a Thornycroft, and by 1936 was operating 2 lorries.

His Son, Edward Jones, took over the business in 1936; he formed S Jones (Aldridge) Ltd, and over the course of the next 25 years built up a large fleet of tipper lorries operating throughout the UK which later diversified into general haulage.

During this time the business moved from central Aldridge to its present location in Anglian Road, Aldridge.

Edward’s son, Michael joined the family business in 1962, and under his fathers’ leadership they progressed the business. They became Main Distributors for ERF Trucks and operated the first HGV driver training school in the country.

The container revolution commenced in the UK around 1970 and our general haulage fleet developed into container transport; this led us to become one of the largest Shipping Container Depots in the Midlands storing, repairing and maintaining many thousands of shipping containers every year, an activity which continues today.

During our years in transport we operated a freight forwarding and consolidation service. S Jones became a market leader in bulk tankers transporting hazardous liquids throughout Europe.

Our container depot and transport company opened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; after operating for 22 years this was sold to a Saudi owned company in 1998. Andrew Jones’s first position in our family business was with Trans Arabia in Jeddah.

In the mid 1990’s new premises for the ERF Truck distributorship opened in Westgate, Aldridge; However, this, and the economic climate at the time, led to the consolidation of the family business in 1999 to the Container Depot Company in Anglian Road.

In 1999, Andrew Jones was appointed a Director.

Since 1999 the original Shipping Container Depot business, S Jones Containers Ltd, has expanded into other allied fields; we are now one of the country’s leading Retailers and Hirers of Shipping Containers. Our Container Conversion business offers specialist container modifications for varied uses and our self storage business U Can Store It Self Storage, which was established in 2000, has extensive facilities at Aldridge and West Bromwich.

In 2007, our spray booth was installed to massively improve paint finish quality.

In 2008, Andrew Jones and Michael Jones became joint Managing Directors and Jill Buckland became Company Secretary.

In 2011, we moved from 2D to 3D CAD modelling to help with bespoke conversion quality.

We expanded our office to cope with the growth in both Conversions and Sales.

Michael Jones became Chairman of S Jones, Jill Buckland became Director. Andrew Jones continues as Managing Director.

Since 2015, the Management Board of the Company consists of Michael Jones as Chairman of the Company, Andrew Jones, Managing Director and Jill Buckland, Director. Following its’ 100th year of trading the ‘Sammy Jones’ family business continues to flourish. We continue to exceed our customer’s expectations for service and cost.

We proudly gained the ISO9001 registration in 2015. We operate with formal processes and constant improvement ensuring complete customer satisfaction.

In 2015 with the help of our growing loyal customer base we surpassed the “1000 containers on hire” milestone over a year ahead of our goal.

In Jan 2016, we re-launched our U Can Store It Self Storage website.