The outlook for East European heavy trailer sales is flat for the 2025-26 period, according to a recently released market forecast.
CLEAR International has just issued its March 2025 forecast for the East European heavy trailer market.
Despite this year’s forecast, the company’s prognosis for the 2027-28 period is for increasing trailer demand, which will eventually lead to a new record sales level. This is heartening news, as 77 per cent of all goods in Europe are moved by road, the majority of which is transported by trailers.
The report found that in 2023 the Russian trailer market grew by 57 per cent, due to the Russian government buying significant quantities of transport assets, including trailers.
The flow-on from those purchases continued into 2024 with another increase of 32.1 per cent. However, the CLEAR International report found that for the remainder of the forecast period, Russian trailer demand will revert to more normal levels.
While Russia experienced a boost in trailer demand, the report added that most other East European countries saw a fall in trailer demand in 2024. Accordingly, the overall demand for trailers in the region fell by 10.2 per cent. In particular, the region’s largest markets, such as Poland, Türkiye and Lithuania saw substantial falls in trailer registrations in 2024.
The report found that the drop was in part caused by a fall in business confidence arising from the conflict in Ukraine. This saw a general willingness in a number of countries to invest in new transport equipment such as trailers and trucks.
Also, 2023 had record demand for new trailers, with the East European market exceeding 120,000 units for the first time. Türkiye had sensational levels of trailer sales. Arguably there are now plenty of new trailers in the regional fleet.
It found that a lack of growth in demand for road transport was experienced across Eastern Europe (measured in tonne-km) since Q4 of 2022. This was despite it increasing in a linear fashion for the past 20 years.
However, even Poland, which has the highest road transport demand in Europe, had a 2.7 per cent fall in demand, which was exceeded by Germany which had a fall of 5.8 per cent.
The forecasting report also found that, despite falling since 2022, import and export trade in Eastern Europe (measured in US$) stabilised and grew in the second half of 2024. However, the outlook for 2025 is for a similar trailer demand level to 2024.
Although 13 of the 15 countries in the region will see some growth, the report found that Türkiye and Russia will experience normal levels of demand after the very high levels of 2023/24. The expected falls in these two countries will almost balance the limited increases in the other smaller markets.
It further found that after another flat year in 2026 there will be growth in demand for trailers in 2027/28 with a new record for sales level established in 2028. However, geo-political tensions and developments across the Eastern European sector, including Türkiye could affect the forecast.
“The outlook for the East European trailer market in 2025/26 is flat,” said CLEAR International Director, Gary Beecroft.
“It will be 2027 before there is any substantial growth and 2028 could provide a year of record-breaking trailer demand.”
