News

More than half the journeys made by foreign trucks within the UK last year involved empty trailers. According to the Department for Transport's Road Freight statistics 2007, this is caused by foreign trucks dropping loads in one location and collecting another load somewhere else. The average empty journey by a foreign truck in the UK  was 140km. This compares to a cabotage journey which averages 184km.

By far the largest number of journeys in the UK by foreign registered trucks are made by Irish vehicles, which made 274,000 loaded cabotage journeys in2007 - moving 2.4m tonnes - and 134,000 empty trips. However, the Netherlands carried more tonnage, shifting 2.7m tonnes in 240,000 cabotage movements. But the Dutch truckers managed fewer empty trips, with 88,000.

Together with France, Germany and Belgium, they accounted for the 91% of all cabotage in the UK. Of the new EU states Polish trucks topped the list carrying 357,000 tonnes in 83,000 journeys.

Other findings:

• Freight moved by UK-registered HGVs increased 4% to 161bn tonne-kilometres.
• Articulated vehicles over 33 tonnes accounted for 73% of total t-km in 2007.
• The amount of freight lifted in 2007 was 3% above 2006 at 1.8bn tonnes.
• Just over half of all goods (52%) were lifted on trips of 50km or less.
• 73% of the 446,000 goods vehicles over 3.5tonnes registered in the UK are rigids.
• The number of licensed operators has fallen from 115,000 in 1997 to 100,000 in 2007
• Around 45% of all licensed operators run just one vehicle, while only 0.3% run more than 100 trucks.