Last year in the European Union, transport services on 13.12 billion tons of goods, with a drop of -3.4% on 2022, and in 2023 the performance of road haulage in the EU was overall 1,857.0 billion tonne-kilometres (-3.2%). Eurostat releasing the latest data on the volumes of goods transported on road, explained that, after some variability in the first and in the second quarter of 2020 due to restrictions related to to the Covid-19 pandemic, road freight transport was increased and remained relatively stable in 2022, while in 2023 recorded decreases in all quarters, with a -2.3% in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2022 followed by reductions of -3.6% in the second quarter, -3.8% in the third quarter of -3.1% in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In 2023, the sharpest decreases in terms of Tonne-kilometres handled were recorded in Portugal (-16.4%), Slovakia (-16.2%) and Sweden (-11.5%), while Lithuania (+17.3%), Denmark (+8.2%) and Cyprus (+7.8%) recorded the higher growth. In Italy, with 1.04 billion tons transported and a performance of 145.2 billion tonne-km, decreases of -0.5% and -3.9% respectively were recorded.

Of the 13.12 billion tonnes of goods transported on road in the EU in 2023, 11.91 billion tonnes (-3.5%) were transported domestically and 1.21 billion tons (-3.1%) in the international arena. In addition, of the total, 3.09 billion of tonnes of goods (-4.9%) were transported by services in own account and 10.02 billion tonnes (-3.0%) were transported by services for third parties.

Last year, of the total number of goods transported by road in Italy, 1.01 billion tons (-0.1%) were transported in Italy and 26.9 million tonnes (-13.5%) in the international. In addition, of the total, 141.1 million tons (+5.0%) were transported by services on own account and 900.5 million tonnes (-1.4%) from services on behalf of third parties.

Regarding the type of cargo transported in 2023 on the roads of the European Union, Eurostat has specified that, as in previous years, metal ores and other products of Mining and quarrying have been the most transported amounted to 3.14 billion tonnes. Other Significant product groups were the other mineral products non-metallic products with 1.56 billion tonnes, food, beverages and tobacco with 1.55 billion tonnes and agricultural, forestry and fishery products with 1.27 billion Tons. The highest increases were recorded by the transport equipment (+12.4% on 2022), from the furniture (+9.7%) and coal and lignite (+7.6%). The most significant decreases were recorded by the transport of other products non-metallic minerals (-11.2%), other goods (-6.6%) and non-metallic minerals metal ores and other mining and quarrying products (-6,0%).