European truck driver shortage 2026: Girteka expands to Latvia, Romania

The European truck driver shortage is now reshaping where major hauliers put their trucks: Girteka Logistics, one of the continent's largest asset-based road hauliers, confirmed on 2026-08-26 that it is opening new operating entities in Riga, Latvia and Oradea, Romania to register trucks and employ drivers locally. The Vilnius-based group already runs close to 100 locally registered trucks in Latvia, with its first Romanian trucks and drivers due shortly. The move shows how far Europe's largest fleet operators will now go to secure driver capacity, a constraint that increasingly decides how much freight moves and at what price.

Latvia is running, Romania is next

Girteka's Latvian operation is the more advanced of the two. The company says its Latvian fleet is approaching 100 locally registered trucks already on the road, alongside a growing local team recruiting transport and management staff in Riga. In Romania, the Oradea operation is still in preparation, with the first trucks and drivers expected to join shortly. Girteka says both entities will be fully integrated into its wider European network rather than run as separate businesses.

The company frames the decision as operational rather than tax-driven. "The decision is not based on any specific regulatory or tax distinction. One of the most important reasons is the ability to provide a sufficient number of drivers for our fleet and meet customer needs," Girteka said, in comments reported by trans.info on 2026-08-26. Pavel Kveten, CEO of Girteka Logistics, added that customers in temperature-controlled and high-value cargo expect reliable capacity and tight operational control as labour conditions shift across Europe.

This is not Girteka's first move of this kind. Poland already hosts one of its most important transport bases, with around 3,000 trucks and more than 4,000 employees connected to its Poznan operation, built up partly under the EU Mobility Package. The group also runs operations in Germany, Denmark and Norway. Latvia and Romania extend the same logic: position trucks and drivers where labour conditions are most workable, rather than concentrating everything in Lithuania.

Why does the driver shortage no longer follow the economic cycle?

Behind the restructuring sits a driver shortage that IRU describes as structural rather than cyclical . Its report, published 2026-06-30, found around 502,000 unfilled truck driver positions in Europe, a 13% shortage rate, up from 12% a year earlier. Around 20% of Europe's driver workforce is expected to retire within five years, roughly 660,500 drivers by 2030. Driver shortage now ranks as the top concern for 65% of European operators, with roughly two-thirds turning down contracts for lack of drivers, and women still account for only around 4% of European truck drivers, a pool IRU says remains largely untapped.

Girteka's home market shows the pressure directly. Lithuania effectively exhausted its 2026 quota of 24,700 non-EU foreign worker permits by the end of July 2026, according to the Migration Department . Once the quota is reached, work permits require salaries of at least EUR 2,893 a month, or EUR 2,411.40 for shortage occupations. The International Transport and Logistics Alliance told Verslo Zinios that hitting the quota so early was a setback for the logistics sector, warning that firms would struggle to maintain, let alone expand, operations under the current rules.

What the move signals for shippers choosing carriers

For freight buyers, the takeaway is that carrier capacity increasingly depends on which national labour markets a haulier can draw on, not just fleet size on paper. A haulier confined to a single, saturated recruitment pool is more exposed to delays and rate spikes than one that can register trucks and hire drivers across several countries. Shippers comparing carriers may want to ask how a partner sources its drivers, and whether that supply is diversified enough to absorb a weak recruitment quarter. Logifie works with a diversified carrier network built for exactly this kind of pressure, and driver-availability questions are covered in the Logifie FAQ .

Girteka's move will not be the last of its kind. As Europe's driver shortage keeps widening rather than closing, more large fleets are likely to spread registrations and recruitment across borders in the same way. Shippers who want capacity that holds up through this shift can get a quote from Logifie .