Transporters who cannot obtain a visa from the EU are disposing of their vehicles

Road transporters who transport goods to Europe by truck also had their share of the visa problem. Four out of 10 trucks cannot do business.

According to the news by Aysel Yücel from Ekonomim, transporters cannot actively use approximately 40 percent of their fleet due to the high prices of fuel, the stagnation in the economy and the problems caused by the Schengen visa obstacle.

Founding President of TIRPORT, one of the logistics industry experts, Dr. Akın Arslan said that it has become difficult for companies to access financial resources and they cannot pay truckers: “Maturities of 45-60 days, which used to be normal, are now causing serious problems with increasing costs. For example, an additional 2 weeks delay in a payment can cost a company up to 4 percent. On the factoring side, costs have now reached 7 percent per month. Production and trade fell severely. “The loss is around 30 percent, so there are many trucks but little work.”

According to Arslan, today there are nearly 8 thousand logistics/transportation companies in Turkey and approximately 60 thousand of the companies’ 550 thousand commercial cargo transportation trucks also go abroad.

Kamion Founding Partner and CEO Berkay Adlım reminded that e-commerce, which gained momentum with the pandemic, accelerated the sales of trucks and tractors, and the fact that trucks came to the fore as an investment vehicle, especially last year, caused the supply to rise rapidly in the market.

Industry managers state that many transporters in the market are trying to dispose of their vehicles due to increasing inflation.

According to the heavy commercial vehicle industry’s March data, in March 2024, the heavy commercial vehicle market decreased by 25 percent on an annual basis to 3,705 units. Thus, the heavy commercial vehicle market in the January-March period of 2024 decreased by 3 percent compared to the same period of the previous year, remaining at approximately 10 thousand units.

Ayşem Ulusoy, Vice President of the International Transportation and Logistics Service Providers Association (UTİKAD), stated that companies cannot even employ spare drivers due to increasing costs: “When the visas were not issued, the vehicles started to wait in the facilities. “While the driver employment problem is already at a high level, we cannot obtain visas for the drivers we have.”