Digitalisation vs profitability: what Eurowag’s 30 years in Estonia revealed

On 4 September, representatives of transport companies, industry organisations, vehicle and trailer manufacturers and public authorities gathered near Tallinn for Drive Together, an event held to mark Eurowag’s 30th anniversary.

The event brought together contrasting views of what lies ahead for Estonian carriers—and for the Baltic transport market more broadly.

Technology is ready. Is the market?

Technology providers are sending a clear message: the industry needs more data, automation and electrification.

Eurowag presented telematics solutions developed for the Baltic market. They bring vehicle location, mileage, fuel consumption, working time, CAN and tachograph data, as well as cargo temperature, together in one environment.

The system can analyse driving behaviour, download tachograph files, prepare reports and track costs and routes. Speakers also pointed to the option of retaining historical data for up to two years in the standard package and connecting the platform with other Eurowag services.

This may sound like a standard product presentation, but it reflects one of the most important changes taking place in transport. Carriers are increasingly managing a stream of data, not just a truck and a driver. That stream covers driving time, fuel consumption, charges, route planning, driver behaviour, documentation and deviations from the plan.

In a low-margin business, a modest improvement in fleet utilisation or a reduction in empty mileage can matter more than a headline-grabbing technological breakthrough.

Lauri Laur, owner of the small transport company MRG Plus in Pärnu, made a similar point. He stressed the value of well-organised logistics and avoiding unnecessary mileage.

Carrier rates are not particularly attractive at the moment, especially with costs this high and drivers in short supply. But good logistics can reduce mileage and make the business profitable, said Lauri Laur.

That is less dramatic than predictions about autonomous trucks, but it is probably closer to the daily reality of many small carriers. This is where technology meets economics: telematics creates value not by adding another chart, but by helping a company cut empty running, identify problems earlier or make better use of a driver’s working time.

Electric trucks are coming—but infrastructure comes first

DAF used the event to outline the development of its latest truck generation and PACCAR’s strategy for alternative powertrains, driver-assistance systems, connected vehicles and automation.

The manufacturer said PACCAR had invested around $3.2bn in new technologies over the previous five years. DAF’s new platform was designed from the outset to support several powertrain options, ranging from diesel and electric drive to hydrogen and hybrid solutions.

The more significant point was that DAF does not view electrification as a matter of replacing one truck with another.

Whenever we talk about electrification, we have to consider three pillars: the electric vehicle, the charging solution and the services. Without charging, the vehicle is useless, said Koen van den Bogaard, DAF’s regional sales manager.

That statement places the debate about electric trucks firmly in the carrier’s world. Buying the vehicle is only one part of the investment. Access to sufficient power, charging facilities at the depot and along the route, charging schedules and the impact of charging stops on vehicle utilisation are just as important.

The cab is becoming a recruitment tool

DAF also highlighted factors beyond the powertrain. Energy and fuel efficiency, safety, visibility and driver comfort remain key areas of competition between manufacturers.

Comfort might be dismissed as a marketing feature. In Estonia’s labour market, however, it has a more practical role. The DAF representative put it plainly:

Finding drivers and keeping them in the company is an everyday challenge for carriers. That makes cab comfort important, because it can influence which employer a driver chooses to work for, Koen van den Bogaard told the business owners.

The most urgent issue is still the people

The sharpest contrast with the technology presentations came from Tiit Parik, who represented Estonia’s international carriers on behalf of ERAA. Some 42% of Estonian drivers are aged over 55, while people under 25 account for only around 1% of the profession.

If that age profile remains unchanged, the industry will face a problem that better truck aerodynamics and another telematics feature cannot solve.

Parik said the state driver-training system had been scaled back and, according to carriers, should be rebuilt. He also pointed to the barriers facing younger people who want to enter the profession. In principle, professional driving can begin at 21, but the training route that would allow people to qualify earlier is currently not sufficiently available.

The ERAA president stressed that complaining about the driver shortage is not enough if the training system is not bringing a new generation into the industry. Carriers are looking at solutions modelled on Finland, including ways to make better use of qualifications gained during military service.

Carriers want a different road-charge model

Costs were another major point of contention. Parik criticised Estonia’s time-based road-charge system, noting that a truck can currently face a daily charge of €22 regardless of the distance it actually travels.

The industry is calling for a distance-based system, similar to those used in many other European countries, with the money collected from transport reinvested in road infrastructure.

Tax competition between countries adds another layer of pressure. ERAA cited Sweden as an example, saying fuel there can be around €0.20 cheaper per litre. For a truck and trailer combination taking on hundreds of litres, that is not a minor difference—it can determine in which country the carrier spends its money.

From the state’s perspective, higher charges therefore do not automatically guarantee proportionally higher revenues. A truck can simply refuel in another country.

Parik also raised concerns about enforcing rules for foreign vehicles. According to figures presented at the event, only a small proportion of vehicles are subject to payment checks. By contrast, an Estonian carrier found to have breached the rules abroad can be detained until security has been paid.

In his view, the authorities already have the technology to read number plates automatically in places such as car parks. It is therefore difficult to explain the lack of similar automation in road-charge enforcement as a technical limitation.

One larger combination instead of another truck?

Industry organisations shared an idea for improving transport efficiency: using longer vehicle combinations.

A representative of the Estonian Logistics and Freight Forwarding Association, ELEA, noted that Estonia already permits combinations measuring 25.25 metres. The industry is looking further ahead, towards solutions used in the Nordic countries, including combinations as long as 34.5 metres.

The expert also urged caution. The main obstacle to further liberalising combination lengths is infrastructure, particularly the need to upgrade major routes to a 2+2 standard.

The rationale for longer combinations is straightforward: if one vehicle can carry more freight, the same amount of work requires fewer trucks, drivers and kilometres.

ELEA also pointed to potential emissions benefits, presenting figures that showed a significant reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of freight when longer combinations are used.

The proposal therefore links two issues that may initially seem unrelated—the labour shortage and emissions reduction.

However, ELEA stressed that safe operation requires suitable main roads, parking areas and facilities for heavy vehicles, including charging infrastructure. The Tallinn–Narva, Tallinn–Tartu and Tallinn–Pärnu corridors were identified as especially important.

This example captures the broader nature of transport’s transformation. Changing the vehicle is not enough; the system around it must change as well.

Electrification can also run into the rulebook

ELEA highlighted a similar relationship between technology and regulation in light electric transport. Heavier batteries can leave an electric van with less payload than a comparable combustion-powered vehicle. The association suggested allowing electric vans with a gross vehicle weight of up to 4.25 tonnes to be driven with a category B licence, which would help operators use their transport capacity more effectively.

That may look like a narrow legislative detail, but details like this often determine the economics of decarbonisation. A carrier is not buying a reduction in CO2; it is buying a vehicle that must carry a certain number of pallets or parcels every day and earn its keep.

If electrification requires two vehicles where one was previously sufficient, its financial and environmental balance becomes much more complicated.

Digital systems do not remove the need to check data

The technology shift has another side: increasingly digital enforcement. Jüri Milov, chief inspector at the Estonian Labour Inspectorate, discussed checks covering working and rest time, employment records, pay and tachograph-related data. A particularly practical warning concerned new-generation tachographs and their integration with telematics systems.

Milov said that the latest devices can experience connection problems and errors when transferring data between tachographs, cards and service-provider systems. Companies need to verify that the data is actually arriving correctly rather than assuming that an automated process must be working flawlessly.

That is an important warning for the industry. Digitalisation does not remove a carrier’s responsibility for its records. In fact, it can allow an error to remain hidden for longer if the operator trusts the automated process without checking it.

The inspector also described requests made by German authorities to Estonian carriers. This year, he had seen seven cases in which the German side had used an EU platform to formally request documentation, while the Estonian side had not responded. The reason? Nobody had checked the system.

This illustrates another aspect of Europe’s digital transport landscape. The tools are designed to speed up information exchange, but they also allow authorities in different countries to reach a company more quickly.

For transport companies, operational expertise increasingly has to include regulatory compliance and data quality—not just the ability to organise a shipment.

Eurowag turns 30, but the next decade may be transport’s toughest yet

At the start of the event, Eurowag representatives identified three forces that will shape transport: digitalisation, decarbonisation and regulation. After several hours of discussion, at least three more belonged on the list: demographics, infrastructure and cost competitiveness. The speakers’ comments made the scale of that gap clear.

DAF’s message to carriers was that an electric truck is not enough without charging. The Labour Inspectorate warned that automated data transfer does not mean operators can stop checking whether the information is actually being received. ELEA added that longer, more efficient combinations make sense, but their potential cannot be realised without suitable roads.

The carriers’ response was equally direct: before fleets can be fully transformed, there must be people to drive them and economic conditions that allow companies to remain in business.

The most important takeaway from Tallinn is therefore a paradox.

Transport is becoming more technologically advanced. Trucks can transmit dozens of parameters in real time, software can automatically analyse driver performance, manufacturers are building vehicle platforms for different powertrains, and trailers are becoming part of the digital ecosystem.

At the same time, the biggest threat to a carrier may still be an empty driver’s seat, a road that cannot support a more efficient combination, the price of fuel or a regulation that prevents new technology from being used economically.

That may best describe the situation across the Baltic transport market—and beyond. The industry is not facing one single revolution. It must manage several transformations at once: technological, energy-related, workforce-related and regulatory, while keeping every kilometre profitable.

For technology providers, that represents a significant market opportunity. For carriers, it may become one of the most difficult decades in their history.