Road freight transport volumes and the logistics load
- Eurostat dataset
- road_go_ta_tott
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- thousand tonnes
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2024): 13 019 540 thousand tonnes.
- Highest value: Germany at 2 778 260 thousand tonnes; lowest: Estonia at 29 834 thousand tonnes.
- Cross-country mean 483 882 thousand tonnes, standard deviation 637 650, coefficient of variation 131.8% across 28 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: +4.3% on a constant panel of 28 countries.
How much freight moves on European roads, and from where? Eurostat dataset road_go_ta_tott reports road freight transport volumes and the logistics load for 28 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 13 019 540 thousand tonnes. Road haulage tonnage tracks the physical throughput of the single market better than any value-based series.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Germany (2 778 260), Spain (1 644 275), France (1 548 138), Poland (1 528 435), Italy (1 110 492), all expressed in thousand tonnes. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Estonia (29 834), Cyprus (41 994), Luxembourg (45 729), Latvia (78 095), Croatia (93 831). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 93.12, while the median country reports 245 549 thousand tonnes against a mean of 483 882 thousand tonnes.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 637 650 thousand tonnes, giving a coefficient of variation of 131.8%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 28 countries reporting in both periods moved by +4.3%. The largest relative increases are observed in Lithuania (+163.4%), Cyprus (+160.5%), Romania (+68.4%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Greece (-40.7%), France (-22.6%), Portugal (-22.4%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
This indicator has no normatively preferred direction; its analytical value lies in the structure of the distribution and in how national positions move relative to each other over time. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset road_go_ta_tott ('Road freight transport by type of operation and type of transport (t, tkm, vehicle-km) - annual data'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-02-17. Filter dimensions: unit=THS_T; tra_type=TOTAL; tra_oper=TOTAL. Unit of measure: thousand tonnes. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (28 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.