“The current situation threatens a large part of the Swedish haulage industry. Bankruptcies are increasing sharply, and as we have seen on the television programme Uppdrag granskning, there are drivers from Eastern Europe coming here without enough money even for food or fuel. The situation is regulated by transitional provisions from the EU, which are very difficult to monitor. A foreign vehicle is allowed to make three commercial journeys in Sweden before leaving the country, but in practice this is almost impossible to check.”
How did you approach the issue?
“I was contacted by the Elin and Charles Lindley Foundation, which supports research in the field of transport. They wanted me to do a study of international freight transport in Sweden. What we did was to develop a phone app where drivers could register foreign number plates. The app reported the time and location automatically. From this information we were able to identify patterns. We filtered out all observations that were not confirmed by at least three different observers.”
What did the results show?
“Five thousand users reported (tagged) 163 000 observations. The highest number of observations for one heavy goods vehicle was 81. The observations were compiled on maps, which showed the results for each individual vehicle. The maps showed that Helsingborg and Gothenburg are the two main hubs in the Swedish transport system.”
The study was carried out over six weeks, ending on 31 May. It showed that around 3 000 foreign HGVs operate more or less permanently in Sweden (compared with 8 000 Swedish):
“We can’t prove that any individual vehicles have violated the rules, but overall the study provides a convincing picture of the situation. It isn’t up to us to propose measures to be taken. Politicians have to take the initiative for that. A subsequent environmental analysis that we conducted showed that CO2 emissions could potentially increase by 30 per cent if cabotage were deregulated in Sweden. For this we compared with the Swedish co-operative union’s transport network.
“The market for the haulage sector has major shortcomings. Even serious Polish and Czech hauliers are experiencing problems. Serious safety issues are not addressed, as has been demonstrated by recent accidents, and a further consequence of price dumping is that more and more freight is being transferred to the roads from the railways.”
FOOTNOTE. The study has attracted interest in neighbouring countries and Henrik Sternberg is looking forward to a planned continuation study in Sweden, Denmark and Norway this autumn.
Text and photo: Mats Nygren
