
DAF truck dealer Adams Morey has just completed its 50th year with the brand. Among the first DAF dealers in the country, the Southampton-based firm has changed quite dramatically from its roots as a transport business in 1952.
Founded by Robert Morey, the transport firm was based just outside the market town of Ringwood in Hampshire, where it worked on the extraction of gravel from nearby sites. In 1973, Morey got the opportunity to partner with DAF, opening Morey DAF Trucks in Ringwood. Fifteen years later, the merger between Leyland and DAF meant Morey DAF was able to acquire Lex Commercials in Southampton and from there the business has grown to cover the south coast and South West, with 12 sites offering new and used DAF trucks as well as new and used Fiat vans.
In 1990, Morey DAF Trucks changed its name to Adams Morey due to long-standing employee Mike Adams becoming part of the running of the ever-expanding business. Together, Adams and Morey expanded into Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Eastleigh, quadrupling the size of the business within just five years. Adams Morey Salisbury opened in 1998, followed by a van centre in Millbrook in 2006. The Basingstoke site opened in 2012, before Adams Morey became part of the Greenhous Group in 2019 and the acquisition of Kingdon Wessex DAF in 2021, adding four new sites to the Adams Morey portfolio. During the same year, the firm also opened a new parts hub and the current head office in Southampton, as well as redeveloping its commercial vehicle super-site in Redbridge.
A celebration of its 50 years in the business took place late last year at Adam Morey’s dedicated parts hub at the Nursling Industrial Estate in Southampton, where the group holds around £5m-worth of parts as a TRP parts centre for a multitude of truck marques. Speeches from dealer principal Chris Pritchard, as well as Robert Morey, Mike Adams and service manager Mike Fennell, then followed, before group MD Kevin Swinnerton added his own tribute. John McMenamin, DAF UK’s dealer development director, then presented an anniversary plaque.
Now in its 51st year, Mike Adams says that high among the achievements of Adams Morey is the family and community spirit fostered by the firm. The close-knit community surrounding the business has ensured that staff and customers alike have stuck with it over many years.
“I remember vividly the times when young men living in the deprived parts of Southampton, Portsmouth and even Bournemouth, who had no thoughts of what they would do with their lives, were recruited by Adams Morey. I witnessed their journeys with us and saw them grow as people, everyone becoming part of a large tight-knit family. Many of those people are still with the company – you see, it’s the people that matter more than anything else,” Adams says.