LLANFYRNACH might seem an unlikely base for one of Wales’ most important companies, but the sleepy little village is home to a firm that has kept the wheels of the nation’s economy turning for more than 140 years.

Mansel Davies and Son has been operating in one form or another since 1875 and has been a goods and freight supplier since 1900, initially with horse and cart and then by lorry.

These days, using the latest logistics technology, it has a fleet of more than 150 lorries and employs 300 people at its headquarters and other bases.

To add to its long list of accolades, the firm is now set to be the star of a six-part Welsh language S4C fly-on-the-wall documentary series, with English subtitles.

Lorïau Mansel Davies a’i Fab, starting on Wednesday, January 18, shows how the company has remained very much a family business with an emphasis on employing its workers from the surrounding area.

And as the Tinopolis production team found out, the company is full of colourful characters who combine hard work and professionalism with humour, leg-pulling and the milk of human kindness.

The company is headed by Stephen Davies, although his 80-year-old father Kaye Mansel Davies still has more than a say in the running of the yard.

Stephen said: “We are now into the sixth generation of Davieses involved in the business and we want to keep the business within the family.

“We employ most of our staff from a 25-mile radius of the village and some of our employees are into the third generation of families working for us.

“This is a 365-day-a-year business, carrying all kinds of freight throughout the UK and Europe, so we all work hard. We carry milk from some 400 farms and take them in articulated lorries to processing plants all over the country.”