2022 saw UK hauliers record 1st uptake in international freight in 4 years, shows latest DfT data

The latest set of figures concerning international road freight activity have been published by the UK Department of Transport. The dataset shows how 2022 saw UK hauliers conduct their first increase in international haulage in 4 years.

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The last uptake occurred in 2018, when UK hauliers moved 5.7 billion tonne kilometres of goods to and from the UK (note that the data excludes HGVs travelling between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland only in cases where the whole journey is confined to the island of Ireland).

Since then, there have been the obvious impacts of both the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit. That said, volumes did decline in 2019, before either of these factors had kicked in.

Further drops to 3.9 and 3.3 billion tonne kilometres then occurred in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Both years were impacted by the pandemic, while 2021 also marked Great Britain’s departure from the European Single Market.

Last year, however, saw an increase of 0.7 billion tonne kilometres.

Will this trend continue – marking the first year of successive rises since 2017 and 2018?

The most-recent data available is for Q1 2023, which is already 0.2 billion tonne kilometres more than the same period in the previous year. So successive annual rises in international freight conducted by UK hauliers could actually be on the cards.

Although the figures show that the UK’s international hauliers have may have turned the corner post-Brexit, the graph above also illustrates just how much less international freight British road transport firms are hauling nowadays compared to the late 90s.

The DfT’s dataset goes all the way back to 1993, when the UK recorded 12.5 billion tonne kilometres of international haulage – over four times the most recent annual total. In 1996, a peak of 16.5 billion tonne kilometres was reached.

Significant changes have also occurred with regards to which country’s hauliers most commonly transport goods in and out of the UK.

Poland has increased its share significantly from 19.8% in 2011 to 25.6% in 2021. During the same period, hauliers from Germany, Netherlands and Spain have all been responsible for a lesser share of the loads going into the UK.

Back then, French hauliers moved 3,603 billion tonne kilometres into the UK, almost 4 times more than they did in 2022. The fall among Belgian hauliers is even more spectacular – from 1,809 to just 186 billion tonne kilometres.


Photo: Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons