Margins Fell Again. Then the Market Ran Out of Trucks.
Market Monday - Week 24 - What 2025 annual reports reveal about road carrier margins and why 2026 is shaping up to be a reckoning for shippers
Twelve months ago, we analyzed EBIT + revenue for six publicly listed European road and intermodal carriers from 2021 through 2024. The conclusion was concerning: margins had peaked in 2022 and were sliding through 2024. Cost inflation, weak industrial demand, and soft contract pricing were damaging even major, publicly traded carriers. It is likely that books of many mid-size and smaller carriers looked even worse.
As FY 2025 annual reports are now in, we are revisiting the topic. The picture in 2025 was not of recovery - at least not in divisional profitability. For most of the cohort, 2025 was another step down. The market beneath them, meanwhile, continued to restructure: carriers exited, capacity tightened, and rates began to move - but often not fast enough to restore margins.
The 2025 scorecards show that margins for road and intermodal divisions kept falling for most of the six major publicly traded logistics providers we tracked, with revenue often flat or up while EBIT came under pressure from subdued European road demand, persistent cost inflation, and contract pricing that lagged costs. DSV’s picture is harder to read after the Schenker deal, and Waberer’s reporting shift makes year-on-year comparison less clean, but the underlying story matches DHL and Kuehne+Nagel: land transport in Europe stayed tough. Waberer’s was the outlier, becoming slightly more profitable, although from a low base. Generally, asset-heavy names like Waberer’s and XPO Europe remained near breakeven despite some growth.The main drivers behind the falling margins in 2025 carried over from the previous period, as cost inflation did not take a year off. Driver wages, tolls and vehicle costs continued to rise across European lanes. Carriers with their own fleets and long contract cycles felt this first.
The main drivers behind the falling margins in 2025 carried over from the previous period, as cost inflation did not take a year off. Driver wages, tolls and vehicle costs continued to rise across European lanes. Carriers with their own fleets and long contract cycles felt this first.
Rates stabilized in places but did not fully catch up. Data from Transporeon Market Insights pointed to spot and contract rates converging and sentiment improving in late 2025, but listed divisional margins still lagged costs for most of the year. Spot-exposed business adjusted faster; contract-heavy road networks did not, as demand stayed soft. European industrial production and road freight volumes offered no strong tailwind. Stable revenue at tracked carriers reflected this.
The footnote from the original piece still applies: margins are not perfectly comparable across companies, because divisions bundle road with forwarding, logistics, or insurance differently. The directional signal was nonetheless clear - and it pointed the same way as in 2024.
Asset-based mid-size and smaller carriers almost certainly faced margin compression equal to or greater than the figures above suggest. They have less bargaining power on rates, less room to absorb sustained cost increases, a higher cost of capital and no diversified global businesses to cross-subsidize weakened road operations.
That pressure showed up in the market structure, not only in annual reports. Rising insolvency and exit data from France, Poland and Germany pointed to continued carrier attrition through 2025 - especially among smaller operators with fewer than ten trucks. The struggles reflected in weak new fleet registrations persisted, as carriers remained hesitant to invest in new capacity beyond mandatory renewals. Underinvestment in capacity that we flagged as a consequence of prolonged margin erosion was still visible in 2025 registration and ordering data.
Last year also highlighted two structural shifts:
Consolidation accelerated. DSV’s Schenker deal is the headline, but the logic extends across the market: giants are buying share, mid-sized operators become targets, and smaller carriers fight for survival instead of reinvesting.
The capacity side began to tighten even in a weakened demand market. Bankruptcies, fleet reductions and withdrawals reduced effective capacity. That is the setup we consider as the precursor to margin recovery, which did not have time to materialize in 2025.
For shippers, 2024 and much of 2025 remained an environment of stagnant or depressed contract rates relative to the cost base carriers were carrying. That advantage is now eroding. Capacity exits, aging fleets, and tightening driver supply are the medium-term ingredients for firmer pricing, particularly on spot and renewal cycles - even if European GDP growth stays modest. Ruthless cost management, digital tools for utilization and pricing, service diversification, and - for those with balance-sheet capacity - consolidation are the levers that separate targets of fighting for flat EBIT from gaining market share.
The setup that was missing in 2025 is now assembling quickly. Demand, which ended 2025 at a seasonal low with automotive and construction freight particularly weak, has turned: by early 2026, both sectors were recovering meaningfully, beating prior-year levels and adding volume pressure to a supply side that has not had time to rebuild. That demand uptick is colliding with structurally short capacity - new truck registrations stayed low through 2025, and carrier bankruptcies have continued into 2026 - while a sharp spike in diesel prices from March 2026, linked to Strait of Hormuz disruptions, has added a fresh cost shock on top of an already strained cost base. Spot rates hit new highs in spring 2026, with premiums over contract rates widening further; contracted prices are following, but with the inherent lag. For carriers that survived the squeeze, the margin recovery the annual reports have not yet shown should now arrive, driven not by a booming economy, but by a fuel-shocked market that finally ran out of cheap capacity.
Oleksandr Kulish
Senior Consultant
Trimble Transportation (Transporeon)