The figures point to a market that is not losing freight demand, but concentrating it. Vehicle numbers are rising, road freight volumes are up, and companies with more than 100 trucks are expanding just as sole traders and owner-drivers disappear from the sector.
The data comes from the 2026 edition of 100 numeri per capire l’autotrasporto, a road haulage sector report published by Uomini e Trasporti. It shows that Italy had 76,083 registered road freight companies at the end of 2025, more than 20,000 fewer than in 2015. In the last two years alone, 4,604 road freight firms closed.
The decline in company numbers comes despite road transport remaining central to Italian freight. According to the report, 92.1% of tonnes moved in Italy travel by road, or 86.9% in tonne-kilometres. Road freight volumes rose by 29.6% between 2014 and 2024.
The fleet has also continued to expand. Italy had 903,990 commercial and industrial vehicles in circulation at the end of 2025, up 5.9% compared with 2023. The figures therefore describe a sector with growing activity, but fewer businesses sharing that activity.
That imbalance is most visible at the top of the market. Companies with more than 100 vehicles increased from 970 in 2023 to 1,068 at the end of 2025, a rise of 10.1%. Their combined fleet grew faster still, from 260,338 to 293,550 vehicles, up 12.8% in two years.
The 1% pulling away
Those 1,068 companies represent just 1.08% of firms registered with Italy’s national road haulage register, the Albo. Yet they control 32.5% of the vehicle fleet and generate around 29% of sector turnover, according to Uomini e Trasporti.
The turnover gap underlines the scale of the split. The report estimates Italian road haulage turnover at €60bn in 2025. Using Albo registration data, it estimates that about €17.4bn of this goes to the 1,068 largest operators, while the remaining €42.6bn is shared among 98,253 smaller registered entities.
That works out at average turnover of €16.3m for each large operator, compared with €433,000 across the rest of the sector. Uomini e Trasporti notes that the calculation draws on different sources and should be read as a trend estimate rather than a precise accounting figure, but the direction is clear: larger, more structured operators are pulling further ahead.
Padroncini hit hardest
The sharpest fall is among Italy’s traditional owner-driver base, the padroncini. The report says individual enterprises fell by 22,554 between 2015 and 2025, with almost 4,000 closures in the last two years. A separate table shows sole-trader haulier businesses dropping from 56,267 in 2015 to 33,196 in 2025, a fall of 41%.
The latest data also gives wider context to a recent Italian support measure reported by Trans.INFO: in April 2026, Italy’s national road haulage register approved a €2m programme offering €15,000 to one-vehicle hauliers who permanently close their business, cancel their registration and stay out of haulage ownership for ten years. The scheme can cover only around 133 operators at most, but it targets the same group of small firms now shown to be shrinking fastest.
A missing generation
The pressure on small hauliers is also visible in the age profile of those running transport businesses. The average age of someone holding a role in a road freight company reached 55.4 years in 2025, up from 52.8 a decade earlier. Over the same period, 28,486 entrepreneurs aged between 30 and 55 left the sector.
Among sole traders, the fall is particularly steep in the middle age groups. The number of owners aged 40–44 dropped from 6,757 in 2015 to 2,420 in 2025, while those aged 45–49 fell from 9,114 to 3,660. At the other end of the scale, the number of sole traders aged 90 or over rose slightly, from 189 to 231.
For Uomini e Trasporti, this is not simply normal ageing. The report describes a sector struggling to attract new entrepreneurial energy while continuing to rely on those who have remained in the market.
Corporate operators keep growing
The exception to the decline is found among more structured legal forms. The report says società di capitali — corporate legal forms such as limited-liability companies — grew by 46.1% between 2015 and 2025, from 19,613 to 28,433. Almost 2,000 were added in the last two years alone.
That contrast runs through the report’s analysis. Companies able to operate through more structured corporate forms are holding up or expanding, while sole traders and smaller hauliers continue to lose ground in a market increasingly shaped by scale, capital and fleet concentration.
