UK road freight 2025: demand falls 3% as empty running and driver gap linger

One in three kilometres driven by a British heavy goods vehicle (HGV) in 2025 carried nothing at all. Across the full year, GB-registered HGVs lifted 1.53 billion tonnes of goods, a 3% fall from the prior year, while goods moved dropped 4% to 162 billion tonne-kilometres, according to annual figures published by the UK Department for Transport on 2026-05-29 . Operators ran 5.9 billion kilometres without a load — 31% of all vehicle-kilometres — and nearly one in four HGV businesses reported missing a delivery in the final quarter of the year because drivers were unavailable. For carriers serving UK lanes from Continental Europe, the data sets a clear demand baseline for 2026 capacity planning.

What the 2025 figures show for UK road freight

Total HGV distance fell 2% to 19.0 billion vehicle-kilometres in 2025, while goods moved declined faster than vehicle activity, pointing to lighter loads on shorter hauls. The average length of haul edged down from 106 kilometres to 105 kilometres.

The quarterly profile was also more volatile. Goods lifted swung 14% between Q1 2025 (360 million tonnes) and Q2 2025 (408 million tonnes), compared with no more than 8% variation across 2024. That intra-year volatility is harder for operators to absorb when fixing contract rates than a steady-trend decline would be.

Articulated HGVs continued to carry the bulk of goods by weight — 962 million tonnes, or 63% of the total — with an average haul of 134 kilometres. Rigid vehicles carried the remaining 570 million tonnes at an average of just 58 kilometres. One sector bucked the trend: glass, cement and other non-metallic mineral products rose 11%, from 103 million tonnes in 2024 to 114 million tonnes in 2025.

Why 5.9 billion empty kilometres matters for cross-border operators

The empty-running share in 2025 was 31% — barely changed from 30% in 2024 — meaning the structural inefficiency persisted despite the volume drop. In absolute terms, that 31% represents 5.9 billion kilometres run without cargo.

European cross-border contract rates reached 140.1 index points in Q1 2026, up 8.9 index points year on year, according to the IRU (International Road Transport Union), Upply and Transport Intelligence Q1 2026 benchmark . UK domestic softness and EU rate pressure are diverging — and that gap reshapes backhaul economics on cross-border lanes.

For Continental European carriers, the practical implication is backhaul (return-leg) availability. A UK domestic market generating 31% empty kilometres means fewer tightly integrated return loads on cross-border lanes. Operators pricing inbound routes from the Netherlands, Germany or Poland should account for this structural excess capacity — it depresses the spot price on return legs to the continent.

Logifie's real-time fuel cost tracker shows EU-average diesel at EUR 1.942 per litre as of 2026-05-22, up approximately 19% since the start of the Iran conflict in late February 2026, per IRU data . That cost environment makes every empty kilometre more expensive to absorb than it was in 2024.

Why is the UK HGV driver shortage getting worse in 2025?

Driver vacancies have not returned to the 2021 peak — when 43% of HGV businesses reported unfilled positions — but the direction is upward. In Q4 2025, 26% of businesses reported driver vacancies, up from 24% in Q4 2024. Operationally, 23% of businesses with vacancies missed at least one delivery in the previous week due to driver unavailability — up from 14% in Q1 2025.

Median hourly pay for HGV drivers stood at £16.25 in 2025 — 18% below the national median of £19.74 for all employees, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures cited by the DfT . Across Europe, the IRU's 2024 Global Truck Driver Shortage Report counted 426,000 unfilled HGV positions in Europe. The UK pattern — a widening pay gap, minimal financial incentives, and attrition outpacing new entrants — mirrors the continental dynamic, even if the headline numbers are less acute than in 2021.

For operators planning UK capacity from Continental Europe, the message from the 2025 data is pragmatic: softer demand, structurally high empty running, and a driver pool that is tighter than it looks on headline vacancy figures alone. Building in flexibility on volume commitments and rate reviews in H2 2026 is the sensible response.

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