International Road Freight Transport in France: Experiences from Germany, the Netherlands and Driver Costs Analysis

These last few years, French international road freight transport has been undergoing a loss of influence within Europe while traffic has increased and great manoeuvres are taking place since the opening of the European Union towards East. Some of the French transporters are then focusing back on the French market showing a worrying loss in competitiveness. On the contrary, German and Dutch companies are increasing their shares in the French market and have reorganized themselves within Europe to face Eastern Europe competition: follow-up on customers delocalizing in the East, networking, hyperproductivity, markets segmentation between high quality transport in the West, specific markets and low cost segment in Eastern Germany and East Europe (Poland, Romania, ...), intensive geographical closeness to a great harbour (Rotterdam)... What should France learn from German and Dutch experiences? On the basis of a comparison of our neighbours' driving costs and road freight transport structure, our contribution - a synthesis of two recent studies ordered by the Comite National Routier (CNR, studies free to be downloaded by www.cnr.fr) - will first propose a cooperation with German or Dutch companies in order to propose a winner-winner model based on exchange of competencies: North Africa (Morocco for instance) and Southern Europe for French partners (specialization Storage - Logistics) and transport business model and opening towards the East for the German and Dutch partners.