A family-owned truck dealership operating across Suffolk and Cambridgeshire expects to sell more than 800 vehicles this year and reach a turnover of more than £60m as it goes from strength to strength.

Chassis Cab was started by the late Bury St Edmunds entrepreneur David Ruffles in 1982 and is now run by a management team headed up by managing director Robert Baxter and director Sally Ruffles - David's eldest daughter.

The business - which started life as a body repair shop 40 years ago - diversified into truck repair as the body repair sector became saturated with new businesses. It built a reputation for its ability to repair chassis and cabs using what was then the only chassis-straightening jig able to take full length trucks in East Anglia.

The business rapidly expanded, and it was appointed a Leyland-DAF service dealership in the 1980s. It opened its Ipswich headquarters in 1998 - but its founder died just six years later in 2004.

However, it continued to expand into one of the region's top dealerships and leading supplier of trucks. In 2014, the Suffolk dealership acquired the DAF Trucks franchise for Cambridge from Marshall Motor Group.

The business now operates from four sites – Addison Way, Great Blakenham in Ipswich, Northern Way in Bury St Edmunds, Hall Barn Road in Isleham and Fenstanton in Cambridge - and employs 180 staff. Customers include some of the most high profile companies in the region including Turners of Soham, Seven Asset, Greene King and Glasswells

In September last year, it moved its Cambridge site from Newmarket Road to a wholly owned dealership in Fenstanton. The new premises - purchased from Ryder Truck Rental - was officially opened in September this year by director of marketing and sales of DAF Trucks NV, Richard Zink.

At the same time, the company has seen its annual sales rise from 99 trucks in 1999 to a projected 825 in 2022.

Mr Baxter said the truck sector had "come into its own with Brexit, two years of the pandemic and now the challenging economic conditions because of the war in the Ukraine" as truck drivers and business owners seek efficient trucks to keep goods and services flowing.

"We are extremely proud of the long and successful track record of this family owned and run truck business that was created by the hugely ambitious David Ruffles," he added.

"Within our team are fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives and brothers. The success of the business is very much due to our staff who always want this DAF dealership to be the best it can be. We have such a positive relationship with the business owners of East Anglia, and it is so important to us to keep our service standards high to support them.’

"We match customers with the trucks that will help to give them the competitive edge, particularly at times like these where uncertainty produces challenging trading conditions. Our aim is to deliver the truck that works for the business. The award-winning DAF truck range have excellent driving properties – as recently demonstrated by Freddie Flintoff in a Top Gear driving challenge - and excellent manoeuvrability which makes them ideal for all sorts of distribution work - and they are all covered by comprehensive repair and maintenance contracts so they always keep products moving – day and night.’

Ms Ruffles said her father - who had two daughters, Sally and Jane - would be "so impressed" with how the business has developed. "Some of his original ideas are still running through the business today," she said.

"The most obvious change in the trucking sector is how much more sophisticated trucks have become and how reliant we are on the service they provide transporting the huge variety of goods we need around the UK and beyond. The whole sector is now so much more professional than it has ever been and the industry needs to keep improving this image to attract more drivers to cope with increasing workloads."

Despite advances in alternative technologies like hybrid electric, fully electric and hydrogen solutions, the diesel engine remains the top choice for the truck industry, said Mr Baxter.

"The future of trucking is exciting with the development of new types of fuel like Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil (HVO). Whatever comes next, we will be at the forefront of the newest technologies as a DAF distributor – and we are looking forward to the next 40 years as a pioneering family business helping to improve the fleet fitness of so many growing businesses from the region."