If we take a closer look at Eurostat figures, we can see that only 6 countries are above the limit of 1bn tons annually transported on the road : France, Spain, Germany, the UK, Italy and Poland.
Portugal, for instance, has one of the lowest figures for road transport in Europe - meaning that the numerous registered heavy-goods vehicles in Portugal, which we saw in our last blog post, must be at a rather low utilization rate (at least within the Portuguese territory).
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| Click to enlarge. Source: Eurostat |
With regard to absolute figures, Germany has the highest record, reaching almost 3bn tons of road transport in some years (tendency rising during the last 10 years). France is quite close, maintaining a relatively stable average of 2bn tons. Therefore, the different figures of registered heavy-good vehicles in France and Germany, as reported by FAZ/Statista, may be due to other context elements (company strategies on where to register the vehicles; regulatory factors which influence those strategies; utilization rates of the vehicles; size of the vehicles; etc.) but not the quantity of road transport itself.
Furthermore, the absolute figures show a steady rise for road transport in Poland, as well as a peak around 2007 in Italy, Spain and the UK, followed by a decrease (however, with different intensities : figures keep decreasing in Italy and Spain, whereas the UK figures seem to have recovered or at least stabilized).
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| Click to enlarge. Source: Eurostat |
Further research would be required to assess which countries and which companies benefitted most from those road transports. At this stage, we can only take a limited first glimpse at the road transport sector in Europe.
Nevertheless, we might already have a look at the European representation of road transport. One of the biggest EU-lobby organizations of the road transport sector has kept its French abbreviation (possibly yet another indicator for a French leadership in this sector?), instead of switching to an English one like most lobbies. Indeed, the "Union Européenne des Transporteurs Routiers" (UETR) represents 16 national associations from 14 countries (according to its German member BTV). Yet, the new president of UETR, elected in February 2015, is not a French national... but she is from Germany!
In any case, with three vice-presidents coming from France, Italy and Slovenia, the association indeed keeps up quite a European mix.
After all, it maybe doesn't always matter so much about who leads the race, but more about getting to the goal together.
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| Dagmar Wäscher, the newly-elected president of UETR. Source: BTV |
P.s.: It is also quite interesting to take a look at the importance of road transport in each country, expressed as a percentage of all inland freight transport, and compared to waterway and railway transport, just to complete the picture. For example, it is noteworthy that the share of road transport is relatively low in countries such as Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, which in return rely more on waterway transport (Netherlands, Belgium), railway (Sweden) or a mix of both (Germany) :
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| Road, railway and waterway share in total inland freight transport (tonne-kilometres, 2012). Source: Eurostat |
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