SA trucking warned: geopolitical shocks are killing fleet confidence
Fleet operators in Southern Africa should be paying close attention to what’s unfolding across Europe’s road freight corridors where trucks carry 70% of all transported goods. According to the latest market report from CLEAR International, Western Europe’s trailer recovery has been derailed by the Trump administration’s tariff offensives, cutting expected growth for 2025 by 50%.
According to Gary Beecroft, director of CLEAR International, a UK-based trailer market forecasting service: “The outlook for the West European trailer market in 2025 has been knocked back by the tariff wars instigated by the US and its trading partners. This has reduced business confidence in companies that purchase transport assets such as trailers.”
Beecroft notes that a strong rebound had looked likely at the start of the year. “After two years of falling trailer sales, a substantial rebound in demand was a reasonable expectation. All that was needed was a stable economic environment.” That stability vanished almost overnight.
In April, the European Central Bank (ECB) cut its refinancing rate to 2.4% and other national banks followed suit. Coupled with more optimistic GDP projections, trailer registrations were forecast to surge by over 10%, says Beecroft. Then the US introduced sweeping tariffs, sparking retaliation from trade partners while injecting instant uncertainty into transport investment cycles.
“It cannot be emphasised enough,” states Beecroft, “that one of the main issues preventing companies investing in new trailers was a lack of business confidence.”
With the tariff war now underway, trailer growth is expected to reach just 6% this year, he adds, despite a generally positive economic backdrop. Only Austria and Switzerland are at risk of registering outright (GDP) decline, with Germany also underperforming in H1.
Cautious optimism
After bouncing back from COVID in 2021 and 2022, production volumes were slammed into reverse again in 2023 and 2024. One structural blow was the collapse of the Russian export market, previously a key outlet for West European trailer builders, says Beecroft.
“Most of the trucks now sold in Russia are thought to be supplied from China,” he observes. “China also has huge capacity for the manufacture of trailers and can easily supply demand previously met from European sources. This particularly affects large trailer exporters in Germany and elsewhere in the West European region.”
There is cautious optimism however, Beecroft says. Road freight activity, which fell 4% in 2023, stabilised in 2024 and may rise again this year. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Composite Leading Indicators (CLIs) also suggest that the UK, Italy, Germany, France and Spain are hovering just above the trend baseline, hinting at modest growth in the next six months.
Beecroft is forthright: “The commencement of any increase in trailer demand has now definitely been postponed until the second half of the current year.”
The full recovery is now expected by 2027, reaching levels close to 2022, and by 2028, demand could once again match the market highs of 2008 and 2018, Beecroft concludes.
Editor’s comment: For South African tipper operators in particular and indeed all logistics stakeholders, the correlations with our recent drop in trailer demand are striking. International trailer markets are a weathervane for trade headwinds. Business confidence, cost cycles and global politics are once again proving just how vulnerable road freight remains to events beyond its control.
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