Logistics efficiency is one of the main challenges that need to be addressed in the upcoming years in Europe. Especially in transport logistics operation, a closer look reveals that today we have to deal with a high degree of inefficiencies in this area.

For example, since 2006 every year approximately 20% of all truckloads are empty trips[1]. Another studies reveal that the utilization of e.g. Trucks on the roads in Europe vary between 30 to 50% (the load area of the truck is less than half full[2]).

For the following years experts expect a significant increase of truckloads[3]. That means also a significant increase of underutilized trips. This underutilization need to be put in to perspective with the attempt by Truck manufacturers to decrease the output of CO2, HC, CO, NOx, Particle, CH₄, NMHC, Pb, SO2, N2O, NH3, Benzol by a few percent, and it is obvious that the bigger potential in decreasing these dangerous levels of emission is just by simply enhancing the utilisation of the existing transport logistics infrastructure. One cause for this underutilisation was already mentioned, mainly the availability of cheap road transport capacities especially from Eastern Europe. Another cause are missing network concepts on the macro and micro level of business and economics.

Since the Logistics market is a highly competitive market there is also a lack of cooperation. Rather than cooperating logistics service providers opt to buy their competition in order to e.g. expand their network, gain critical relations etc. This harsh economic environment therefore doesn’t help to establish cooperation schemes and trust between the different market players in the logistics field, and subsequently leads to island solutions of each industrial player. In comparison to the manufacturing area where more and more strategic partnerships are (e.g. extended enterprises, virtual Enterprises)  formed along the supply chain it is quite interesting to see that so far we haven’t seen similar concepts deployed in the logistics field on a broader base.

Again European statistics reflect that trend. The map below shows the share of road-transport per country in 2010 compared to the road-transport share of this country from 2004 (2004=1.0).

Figure: Share of road transport per country in 2010 compared to 2004 (2004 = 1.0)

This illustrates the importance (success-story) of road transport of the last years in eastern European countries where the rest of Europe either reduced the share of road transport or experienced much smaller growth rates of about 2% where the rate in countries like Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia increased by more than 10%[4].

Another reason for the bad utilization is the predominant opinion of Logistics provider that they need to show to their customer that they are operating the transport in order to avoid losing their customer. Thus even routes and relations that don’t fit into a logistics provider network are operated by them just to keep the customer.

Also there is a profound oversupply of (single) transport providers which has decreased the price for road transport to an extend where alternative transport mode struggle to keep up in the competition. This trend is also reflected by the development of the different modes of transport used for European freight transport within the last 15 years as shown below. From 1995 until now, the share of total freight transported on the road increased by almost 10% in EU25 zone. Surprisingly the share of railway- and inland water transport decreased by almost 25% in the same period which leads to the conclusion that big shares of the transport volume shifted from railway and water-modes to the road.

Figure - Modal split of freight transport in Europe – 1995 - 2010 (source: eurostat, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu) 

In addition to all the situations mentioned previously, the transport logistics sector also has to handle with increasing prices of oil and fuel. In the following figure you can see the development of crude oil since 1960. Besides all commercial depression one reason for this increase of commodity prices is the increasing lack of this raw material.

Figure 3: Deployment of crude oil since 1960 (source: Tecson, http://www.tecson.de/historische-oelpreise.html)

The state of the art in logistic efficiency can summarized as follows:

-          20% of all truck trips are empty trips

-          30 – 50 % of all truck trips are underutilized

-          Underutilization is a result of cheap transport prices

-          Experts expect a significant increase of truck loads in the future

-          Increase of truck loads means also an increase of dangerous levels of emission

-          Lack of cooperation between logistic providers

-          Missing trust in between the different market players

-          Missing networks on the macro and the micro level of business and economics

-          More stable freight increase

-          Shift from rail and sea to road transports

-          Oversupply of (single) transport providers

-          Increase of crude oil