Growing prices of transport services in Austria. Due to the lack of drivers

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The transport capacity in Austria and Germany is lower than the demand for transport services. This is not due to the lack of trucks, but because of the shortage of staff in the industry. Prices of transport services in Austria are higher by 5-20%.

The boom of the Austrian economy collided with the lack of sufficient transport capacity. Carriers are occupied in all of Europe. If the client needs to order urgent transport, he must expect high costs. Last-minute transport at the distance of 300 km in Germany costs even as much as 4 thousand euro – reports the Austrian portal nachrichten.at. Why this expensive? The problem here is the luck of truckers, and its growing each year in Germany.

For comparison, the portal gives an example of prices from times when the supply of transport services was higher than demand. At that time, transport from Linz to Hamburg (approx. 900 km) costed even less than 1 thousand euro.

The Austrian entrepreneurs confirm the great prosperity in the market.

Business is doing well. The demand exceeds the supply, and the price of urgent orders grew by 5 to 20%. – Nikolaus Glisic, managing partner at Petschl Transporte, said for the portal.

This trend is also observed in the statistics of the latest “Transport Market Monitor” report, prepared by Capgemini Consulting. In the third quarter of this year, the transport capacity index in Europe fell by 20.5% and prices grew by 7% compared to the same period of the previous year. The analysts confirm that these changes are affected by both the economic boom and the lack of truck drivers.

Insufficient trucks

As Glisic points out, nowadays, the advantage lies with those, who own a fleet, even though such business model has been outdated for years. Not owning trucks and, when necessary, commissioning transport orders – so far, this method worked perfectly. It is still used by those freight forwarders, who handle regular clients and at the same time outsource part of the transport to inexpensive carriers. In a result, a large part of the market was handed over to competitors. The question arises – how big is the fleet of companies who has been doing this for years?

However, the main problem in Austria is not the lack of vehicles, but – above all – the lack of truckers – says Franz Danninger, spokesman for carriers from Upper Austria and head of Hofmann & Neffe, in his interview for nachrichten.at.

Even as much as 5% of the European fleet is not used due to the lack of drivers – he points out.

Comment of the editorial office:

Dominance of the demand over the supply and the deepening lack of staff in the European transport can give rise to a positive change in the industry, both from the perspective of drivers and carriers. On the one hand, they are already causing the increase in rates, and soon, hopefully, will contribute to increased wages of drivers and improve the image of the trucker as a profession.

 

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