EU road freight falls, but Germany remains strong

Last year, according to the latest statistics from the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, hauliers transported 13.2 billion tonnes of goods on the roads of the EU countries. They thus performed freight work amounting to 1.857 trillion tonne-kilometres – a decrease of 3.2 per cent compared to 2022 (1.919 trillion tonne-kilometres). As a reminder, freight work expressed in tonne-kilometres (abbreviated as tkm) is a unit of measurement of freight transport that represents the carriage of one tonne of goods (including packaging and tare weight of intermodal transport units) by a given mode of transport (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterway, etc.) over a distance of one kilometre.

Eurostat notes that after some volatility in the first and second quarters of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, road freight transport recorded growth in 2021 and remained relatively stable in 2022. In contrast, 2023 saw declines in freight work in each of the quarters. These amounted to, compared to the corresponding periods in 2022, a decrease of 2.3 per cent in Q1, 3.6 per cent in Q2, 3.8 per cent in Q3, and 3.1 per cent in Q4.

It is worth noting that in the second half of the year, road freight transport fell to 2019 levels. According to Eurostat, last year’s transport was dominated by food products, beverages, and tobacco, which accounted for 308 billion tonne-kilometres of realised transport work.

Portugal (down 16.4 per cent), Slovakia (down 16.2 per cent), and Sweden (down 11.5 per cent) recorded the largest decreases in realised transport work last year. At the same time, increases were seen in Lithuania (up 17.3 per cent), Denmark (up 8.2 per cent), and Cyprus (up 7.8 per cent).

Germany in the lead

Germany accounted for the most tonnes of goods transported by road within the country in 2023, Eurostat highlights. In addition, Germany was the starting or destination point for almost half of the top 20 bilateral goods flows between countries in road freight transport within the Union last year.

The largest volume of goods was transported between Germany and the Netherlands, totalling 83.3 million tonnes. The second highest volume of goods flow was between Germany and Poland, with 69.2 million tonnes. In contrast, the exchange of goods between Belgium and France reached 53.8 million tonnes.

Germany and France also dominated the top 15 country-to-country flows in the EU.