Broadcast and Camera Equipment Courier Across the UK

A production books a crew, a location and a day. If the camera is not there when the crew is, the cost is not a late delivery — it is a shooting day with everyone paid and nothing shot, and that number is large enough that nobody in the industry treats transport as a commodity.

T&C Logistics moves equipment for camera and lighting rental houses, broadcast facilities, production companies and post houses. Prep-day deliveries, location drops to call times, cross-hires between rental companies, and the returns that come back at midnight. Companies House records over 1,100 active UK companies in broadcast, camera hire and production services. Quotes from £50 (ex VAT), quoted in full upfront before you book.

What does a camera and lighting load contain?

Camera bodies and cinema lenses, matte boxes and follow focus, monitors and video village, batteries and chargers, lighting fixtures and stands, grip, and the flight cases everything lives in.

Flight-cased equipment is designed for exactly this work — castors, foam interiors, rigid shells — which makes the handling straightforward. The complications are value and batteries rather than fragility.

See our studio equipment van and AV and staging equipment transport.

Why are camera batteries a classification question?

Because production batteries are large and carried in quantity. A single V-mount pack is trivial; a case of twelve high-capacity packs plus block batteries for lighting is a different consignment.

Lithium batteries fall under UN3480 when carried alone and UN3481 when installed in or packed with equipment, with road carriage governed by ADR. Watt-hour rating and quantity determine whether a consignment sits within the normal provisions or needs full treatment, and production batteries sit at the higher end of the range precisely because a camera needs to run all day.

Our drivers hold ADR certification, which T&C Logistics holds directly rather than through partners. That means a battery-heavy load can be carried correctly rather than hopefully — which matters, because a general courier refusing a case of batteries on a Friday afternoon is a genuine production problem. See our lithium battery courier and hazardous goods services.

What is a call time and why does it govern everything?

It is the time the crew starts, and it is fixed by the schedule rather than negotiable. Equipment has to be on location before it, not during it.

Location work compounds this. A unit base may be a field, a car park or a closed street with a specific access window, the location manager rather than the production office controls entry, and parking for a delivery vehicle may not exist. Arriving at the right time to the wrong entrance is the same as arriving late.

Give us the call time, the unit base address rather than the location postcode, and a contact who will answer at six in the morning. Vehicles are GPS-tracked so the production can see the run, and ULEZ-compliant for London shoots. See our film and TV industry hub.

How do cross-hires between rental houses work?

One rental house needs kit another holds, usually at short notice and frequently over a weekend. The transport is simple; the accountability is what needs care.

The equipment belongs to one company while being in the possession of another, and neither may have staff at both ends. We record collection and delivery times, addresses, and who released and received at each end, with GPS tracking throughout — which is what settles a later question about condition or timing.

Tell us at booking who owns the kit, who is paying, and who has authority to release it. Where a cross-hire goes straight to a location rather than to the hiring company's warehouse, we need the call time and unit base rather than a depot address.

What happens on a wrap and return?

It happens late, and it happens in a hurry. Equipment comes back at the end of a shooting day, which on location can mean well after midnight, and the rental house needs it checked in for the next booking.

Wrap collections are the mirror image of a call time: the crew derigs when they finish, not at a scheduled hour, and the vehicle has to be there when they do. Our driver network works overnight and weekends as standard, which is why this sector uses specialist carriers rather than general networks.

A returning load is also more mixed and less carefully packed than an outbound one — cases closed in the dark by tired people. That is normal, and it is a reason to check counts against the hire list at collection rather than at the depot in the morning.

How much value is in a typical load?

More than the vehicle. Standard goods-in-transit cover is £50,000 per consignment on our own vehicles, rising to £1,000,000 through the partner network — and a single cinema lens set can approach the standard figure on its own.

This is the category where checking the limit against the actual consignment matters most. A camera package with lenses, a lighting truck's worth of fixtures, or a cross-hire consolidating several rental houses' kit can all sit well above £50,000 with nothing about the load looking unusual.

Tell us the consignment value at quote stage and the applicable limit is confirmed in writing before the job runs. Where value is concentrated in a few cases, our locked cage van and high-value courier service add physical security inside the vehicle.

Do you handle multi-day shoots and tours?

Yes. Multi-day productions and touring shows are a sequence of fixed times with driving between them, planned as a route with drivers' hours accounted for rather than as separate bookings.

Drivers' hours are the constraint that breaks naive plans: a wrap finishing at 02:00 and a call time 200 miles away at 07:00 is not always legally achievable with one driver. The options are a second driver, a later call or an earlier wrap, and establishing that at scheduling costs nothing while discovering it at two in the morning costs a shooting day.

For production equipment on the events side, see our AV and staging equipment transport and stage equipment transport services.

Do you deliver to studios as well as locations?

Yes, and studios are the easier half. A studio has a loading bay, a goods-in procedure, someone expecting the delivery and a name on the door — none of which a location has.

The constraints that do apply are access control and timing. Studio complexes operate security at the gate with a booking list, stages have their own access windows around shooting, and a delivery during a take does not happen regardless of what the schedule says. The unit or production office rather than the stage is usually the receiving point.

Post houses and facilities are different again: smaller consignments, higher frequency, and often media rather than hardware. Those are frequently the most time-sensitive movements of all, because an edit suite waiting on drives is a room full of people waiting.

What about media, drives and rushes?

Small, irreplaceable and frequently the most valuable thing in the vehicle by consequence rather than by price. A drive of a day's rushes represents the whole shooting day.

The material cost of a drive is trivial; the cost of losing it is the day it holds. That inverts the usual value calculation — a case of lenses is worth more money, but a lost drive is worse. Media consignments are recorded individually, carried rather than consolidated, and where the production requires it they travel in a locked cage.

Productions increasingly back up before anything moves, which is the right protection and is not universal. Where a drive is the only copy, say so at booking — it changes how the job is handled and it is worth the conversation. See our high-value courier service.

What does broadcast equipment transport cost?

One fixed price per job, quoted upfront, with fuel and goods-in-transit insurance included. Timing and value drive it more than distance.

From £50 (ex VAT). Final price depends on distance, vehicle, urgency and time — quoted in full upfront. Related: high-value courier and film and TV hub. Call 0121 720 3841 or use our contact page.