Accredited official statistics

International road freight statistics: October 2023 to September 2024, United Kingdom

Published 14 May 2025

About this release

These are accredited official statistics and were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in December 2016. Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. For more information, see the ‘about these statistics’ section.

This statistical release summarises the latest statistics on the activity of UK-registered heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) operating internationally between October 2023 and September 2024.

The information is derived from surveys of businesses that operate road goods vehicles.

Definitions

HGV: a vehicle with a gross vehicle weight of more than 3.5 tonnes. The gross vehicle weight of the vehicle plus the maximum possible weight of goods that can be carried.

Quarter: a calendar year quarter.  In this publication, quarter 1 refers to January to March, quarter 2 refers to April to June, quarter 3 refers to July to September, and quarter 4 refers to October to December.

Goods lifted: the weight of goods carried, measured in tonnes. This is a measure of the total amount of goods transported internationally by UK-registered HGVs.

Goods moved: the weight of goods carried, multiplied by the distance hauled, measured in tonne kilometres. This is a measure of the overall activity of UK-registered HGVs, accounting for both the distance travelled by each vehicle and the weight of its load.

Note: Due to rounding, totals may not appear to equal the sum of their parts.

Important note for users

This publication includes revisions to the statistics for the period January 2022 to December 2023. This change is based on revisions to statistics in the separate publication on Road goods vehicles travelling to Europe: 2024. These figures are used to calculate international road freight statistics by scaling the results of the international road freight survey to be representative of the total activity by all GB-registered HGVs.

The revised figures show a 2.8% (180 thousand tonnes) reduction in the total amount of goods lifted internationally by UK-registered HGVs in 2022 and a 4.0% (230 thousand tonnes) reduction in 2023.  For total goods moved internationally by UK-registered HGVs , there was a 3.6% (143 million tonne kilometres) reduction for 2022 and a 4.6% (162 million tonne kilometres) reduction for 2023.

For more information see the ‘strengths and weaknesses’ section.

Headline figures

In the 12-month period ending September 2024,

5.7 million tonnes

of goods were lifted by UK-registered HGVs operating internationally, a decrease of 2% compared to previous 12-month period ending September 2023.

Yearly trends

This section compares the most recent 12-month period to the previous 12-month period.

Infographic 1: Total amount of goods lifted internationally by UK-registered HGVs in the 12-month period ending September 2024, broken down into imports and exports Table RFS0201

In the 12-month period ending September 2024, UK-registered HGVs transporting freight internationally lifted a total of 5.7 million tonnes (3.1 million tonnes imported, and 2.5 million tonnes exported). This is a decrease of 2% compared to the previous 12-month period ending September 2023 (5.8 million tonnes).

The amount of goods lifted showed minimal variation throughout the first 3 quarters of 2024 (January to September 2024), with 1.5 million tonnes of freight lifted in 2024 Q3, a 0.5% increase from the 1.4 million tonnes lifted in 2024 Q2.

Over the last twenty years, the amount of goods lifted by UK-registered HGVs has been broadly decreasing for both imports and exports, with UK-registered HGVs usually importing more goods than exporting. The gap between imports and exports has reduced slightly in the 12-month period ending September 2024 to 0.6 million tonnes compared to 0.7 million tonnes in the previous 12-month period ending September 2023.

Infographic 2: Total amount of goods moved internationally by UK-registered HGVs in the 12-month period ending September 2024, broken down into imports and exports Table RFS0201

Focusing on goods moved rather than goods lifted, UK-registered HGVs transporting freight internationally moved a total of 3.5 billion tonne kilometres in the 12-month period ending September 2024 (1.9 billion tonne kilometres imported, and 1.6 billion tonne kilometres exported). This is a decrease of 1% compared to the previous 12-month period ending September 2023 (3.5 billion tonne kilometres).

The amount of goods moved showed minimal variation throughout the first 3 quarters of 2024 (January to September 2024), with 0.87 billion tonne kilometres of freight moved in 2024 Q3, a 1.9% increase from the 0.86 billion tonne kilometres moved in 2024 Q2

Note: The previous announcement of the UK leaving the European Union and subsequent transition period, along with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting supply chain disruption, have caused higher levels of volatility in freight statistics over the past 6 years. Therefore, caution should be taken when comparing this data to previous time periods.

Further sources of information

Other statistics related to freight and trade are available.

Domestic road freight statistics

Road goods vehicles travelling to Europe 

ONS UK trade statistical bulletins 

Port freight annual statistics 

Rail freight statistics factsheet

Aviation statistics

About these statistics

These statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in December 2016. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’.

The continued designation of the road freight statistics as accredited official statistics was confirmed following a compliance check by the Office for Statistics Regulation against the Code of Practice in July 2016.

Data source

Previously international road freight data was collected via paper surveys until August 2021, when the method to collect data transitioned to an online survey. An investigation of the data concluded that the methodology change does not affect the comparability of the international data.

This short statistical release provides the latest headline statistics on the amount of goods carried by UK-registered HGVs and the distance they travelled. This release is published each quarter.

A more detailed annual release on international road freight is also available for 2023, which covers the type of goods carried by UK-registered HGVs, as well as their country of origin and destination. This annual report also summarises the latest information from Eurostat and the Traffic Commissioners from Great Britain on foreign-registered HGVs travelling to and from the UK, cabotage, and goods vehicle operator licences.

Accompanying data tables are available which give further detail on the key results presented in the statistical release.

Further information about the statistics and methodology in this report can be found in the road freight domestic and international statistics guidance.

Strengths and weaknesses of data

The figures in this release are derived from the International Road Haulage Survey (IRHS) combined with international trips collected under the Domestic Road Haulage Survey (NI) to provide a complete picture of the international freight activity carried out by UK-registered HGVs.

Excluded from the survey are HGVs registered in Northern Ireland making trips within the island of Ireland, foreign-registered vehicles and vehicles of 3.5 tonnes or less gross vehicle weight (light goods vehicles).

The IRHS is a continuous survey which collects a range of information on freight movements from a sample of approximately 2,033 firms holding a standard international HGV licence in 2023. These licences are issued by the eight regional Traffic Commissioner Offices (TCO) and data are provided to the DfT by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA). In 2023, the overall survey response rate was 99%, with 31% of respondents completing the survey with information on international trips; 35% indicating they were still conducting international work but made no international trips during their survey period and 34% of firms conducting domestic work only or having ceased trading.

IRHS survey figures are scaled up to be representative of the total volume of HGV traffic travelling from GB to mainland Europe using ferry routes and the Channel Tunnel. This information is collected from returns provided by the roll-on roll-off ferry operators (RoRo), giving the number of powered vehicles and unaccompanied trailers carried on each route from GB to mainland Europe, and from monthly information supplied by Eurotunnel.

The use of RoRo data to weight the IRHS data may introduce a small bias for data on imports because RoRo information is collected on outward traffic only. This will affect the weighting of vehicles which return to the UK using a route different than that for the outward journey. RoRo data is also only able to disaggregate between UK and foreign vehicles. An assumption is therefore made on the proportion of UK vehicles which are registered in Northern Ireland to obtain an estimate of GB-registered vehicles.

When quality reviewing the RoRo data supplied for 2024 quarter 2 (April to June) it became evident there were inconsistencies in the reported data for powered vehicles due to differences in how certain operators recorded their figures. While the data supplied was meant to reflect only ferry manifest data (the actual volume carried), variations in reporting approaches led to both overcounting and undercounting.

The suppliers have re-provided data for this period, ensuring that only vehicles falling within the correct definitions are now included in the data supplied. International road freight statistics for the period January 2022 to December 2023 have therefore been rescaled using this revised data. For more information on the revisions made to the RoRo data please see the RoRo revision note.

Chart 1: Total amount of goods lifted internationally by UK-registered HGVs before and after applying revisions, 2020 Q1 to 2023 Q4

For international road freight (chart 1), this resulted in a 2.8% (180 thousand tonnes) reduction in the total amount of goods lifted internationally by UK-registered HGVs in 2022 and a 4.0% (230 thousand tonnes) reduction in 2023.

Chart 2: Total amount of goods moved internationally by UK-registered HGVs before and after applying revisions, 2020 Q1 to 2023 Q4

For total goods moved internationally by UK-registered HGVs (chart 2), there was a 3.6% (143 million tonne kilometres) reduction for 2022 and a 4.6% (162 million tonne kilometres) reduction for 2023.

This release and its contents partly rely on the use of administrative data from DVLA and DVSA. DfT have assessed the impact of this on the quality of these statistics, a report on which can be found in the Quality assurance of administrative data sources: Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency and Quality assurance of administrative data sources: Driver Vehicle Standards Agency.

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Road freight statistics

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