THE OWNER of a haulage company which lost five vehicles in a massive fire is facing tens of thousands of pounds in costs.

Nick Pendleton, director of PTR Services, a commercial haulage company on Miners’ Road on the Llay Industrial Estate, was devastated when he heard five vehicles had been completely destroyed by fire at the site.

The incident happened in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Now he has revealed the cost of the damage, which left three vehicles beyond repair, is estimated at around £80,000.

Mr Pendleton spoke of his shock at what had happened and claimed it must have been a deliberate attack.

He said: “I was totally gutted when I heard what happened on Sunday morning.

“I’ve never had a problem like this here before and it definitely looks like the fire’s been started on purpose.

“We had investigators looking at the trucks on Sunday and they ruled out an electrical fault so what else could it be?”

But he did admit the situation could have been even worse if the lorries had loads on board.

He added: “We tend not to keep the trucks loaded overnight and luckily these five, which included a cattle truck, were empty.

“The worst hit ones are our own but two of them belonged to customers, one of which was in for repairs and another which the owner just parks here.

“I don’t have the money to replace them until the insurance is sorted and I can’t do that until the investigation into the cause is completed – and that could take four to six weeks.”

Yesterday Mr Pendleton was in the process of organising replacement hire vehicles.

A spokesman for North Wales Fire and Rescue said: “The blaze broke out in one HGV before spreading to four other vehicles.

Two fire crews were deployed from Wrexham to tackle the fire just after 5am and an investigation was launched to determine what caused the incident. North Wales Police said they were unable to comment until the blaze had been officially established as deliberate.