Key takeaways
- 547 Belgian transport companies went bankrupt between January and August 2026, up 11.88% year on year.
- Smaller transport firms and courier companies are particularly affected.
- Official Statbel figures independently confirm that transport and storage bankruptcies are running at record levels.
Belgium recorded 7,482 company bankruptcies across all sectors between January and August, according to the latest study from business information provider GraydonCreditsafe. This represented an increase of 3.69% compared with the same period last year.
Transport performed considerably worse than the economy as a whole. Since the beginning of the year, 547 transport companies have gone bankrupt, 11.88% more than a year earlier and the highest figure ever recorded for the first eight months of a year.
The figures extend a deterioration that Trans.INFO has been following throughout 2026. When we last examined the Belgian market in July, GraydonCreditsafe had recorded 456 transport-sector bankruptcies during the first six months of the year, itself an all-time first-half record. The latest figures therefore mean that another 91 transport companies failed during July and August.
Belgium’s official statistics office, Statbel, points in the same direction. Its latest available figures show 524 bankruptcies in transportation and storage during the first seven months of 2026, 13.9% above the previous record of 460 set during the same period in 2025.
Small carriers and couriers particularly exposed
The composition of the failures is perhaps more revealing than the headline total. GraydonCreditsafe says the latest bankruptcies are affecting mainly smaller transport businesses, with courier companies particularly prominent.
That echoes warnings from Belgian transport association TLV earlier this year. Analysing road-haulage failures during 2025, TLV found that almost 80% of bankrupt operators had fewer than six trucks or vans. Many were self-employed carriers or small businesses working in last-mile delivery, often as subcontractors for larger transport or e-commerce companies.
TLV has linked the pressure on these firms to a combination of rising labour and fuel costs, road charges, financing costs and customers taking longer to pay invoices. Smaller operators generally have less financial room to absorb those pressures or wait for outstanding payments.
Price competition is another problem. According to the association, weaker freight volumes have prompted large logistics companies and retailers to put contracts back out to tender, making it harder for carriers to pass their increased costs on to customers.
The pressure has increased further since 1 July 2026, when higher kilometre charges came into effect in Flanders following the introduction of a CO₂ component to the truck toll.
More failures, but fewer jobs affected
One striking feature of the latest figures is that the record number of company failures has not produced a corresponding increase in jobs at risk. GraydonCreditsafe estimates that the 547 transport bankruptcies recorded between January and August affected 1,292 jobs.
By comparison, the company had already counted 1,148 jobs at risk after the first six months of the year.
Two unusually large insolvencies account for a substantial share of the 2026 employment figure: Ziegler and Intertrans, whose failures together involved hundreds of workers. Parts of both businesses were subsequently taken over, preserving a number of activities and jobs.
Outside those exceptional cases, the combination of hundreds of bankruptcies and relatively limited employment losses reinforces the picture of a crisis concentrated increasingly among micro-businesses and small fleets.
And there is little sign yet of the trend reversing. Belgium’s transport bankruptcy figures had already reached record levels during the first half of 2026. Two months later, the sector has added another 91 failed companies to that total.
