The firm warned that tougher market condition had hit demand for its services with volumes down 15% on last year.

It told staff with the outlook set to continue it had reviewed the depot structure to bring down overheads.

In the north west, the Wirral depot has closed with work transferring to Preston and Manchester. In the north east Ainscough’s Newcastle depot has also been shut down with work moving to the Stockton office.

Coventry’s depot is being downsized to a two-crane satellite and Dundee scaled back to a three-crane satellite.

There will also be job cuts in central support functions.

A spokesman said: “We regularly review our fleet capacity and depot structure to ensure we can meet the current and future requirement of our customers.

“As part of our regular reviews, we have recently made a small number of changes to our business, which includes closing two of our smaller depots, where we can meet our customer needs from other nearby depots.

“This does not affect our ability to deliver a truly national service from our 30 locations across the U.K.