European Truck Driver Shortage 2026: Why Carriers Are Competing For You

The world road transport organisation IRU estimates that Europe is short roughly 502,000 truck drivers in 2026, about 13% of all driver jobs in the continent. The gap has grown every year since 2022, and the IRU has warned it could keep widening without action. If you already hold a CE license and drive for a living, this is the strongest bargaining position professional drivers have had in decades, and carriers know it.

This article is written for professional drivers already working in Europe, and for young people weighing the profession. It sets out what the new report data says about the European driver shortage, and how to turn a volatile market into better pay and working conditions.

How many truck drivers is Europe short?

The trajectory is what stands out. In 2023, the IRU counted around 233,000 unfilled truck driving jobs across Europe. By 2024, that number had climbed past 426,000, an increase of over 80% in a single year, according to analysis. The IRU’s newest survey, published in mid-2026, now puts the gap at roughly 502,000, a 13% shortage rate.

Globally, the picture is no better. The IRU’s 2025 driver shortage report, which surveyed more than 5,100 transport companies across 36 countries, found 3.6 million unfilled truck driver positions worldwide, and the mid-2026 update still counts 2.9 million empty seats across the 18 markets it tracks. The gap between the freight Europe needs moved and the people available to move it is structural, and it is widening.

Europe’s truck driver shortage: key numbers from the new report

The IRU’s European survey work adds detail that matters to workers thinking about their future in the transport industry:

• The average European truck driver is 47 years old.
• Only 4% of European truck drivers are women, and fewer than 5% are under 25.
• More than half of European trucking companies cannot expand their business because they cannot find drivers.
• The shortage is expected to exceed 745,000 drivers by 2028 if nothing changes.

Why is there a truck driver shortage in Europe?

The short answer: Europe’s driver shortage comes down to a workforce retiring faster than it is being replaced.

Over 30% of drivers across Europe are now above 55 years old. At the other end, young drivers barely register: under-25s make up just 2.2% of the driver workforce in Italy, 2.6% in Germany, and around 3% in Spain and Poland.

The retirement wave is already scheduled. The IRU projects that 17% of Europe’s current driver population will retire by 2029. Globally, 3.4 million truck drivers are expected to retire over the next five years, while the number of young drivers entering the profession fell 5.8% year over year.

There is also an enormous untapped half of the labour market. Women remain a small fraction of Europe’s truck drivers; in Spain, the IRU found that just 2% of truck drivers are women, a low share by any standard, and even Germany, the best performer, only reaches 7.2%.

The job itself carries an image problem it partly earned. Long hours, weeks away from home, patchy rest areas, and heavy goods vehicle (HGV) training costs that can swallow several months of a minimum monthly wage in many countries all push young workers without access to savings toward other work. Infrastructure lags too: the European Commission’s 2025 parking study found the EU is short about 390,000 truck parking spaces, a gap projected to reach 483,000 by 2040. Until the profession offers real work life balance and pay that makes it attractive, recruitment will keep lagging retirements.

What the European driver shortage means for the logistics industry

The driver shortage lands on everyone who moves or buys goods. When trucks sit idle, supply chains slow down, transport prices climb, delivery windows slip, and the cost of moving everything from food to industrial parts follows. In the worst cases that means empty shelves and halted production lines. More than half of European trucking companies already say they cannot grow because the driver market is empty, which caps capacity across the whole transport sector and raises the risk of delays at exactly the moment demand for road transport across the EU keeps rising.

There is no quick technological exit either. Automation may reshape the job over the long term, but the technology is nowhere near replacing the tasks a driver handles beyond time behind the wheel: securing loads, managing border paperwork, dealing with customers, and keeping cargo and vehicle safe. Shifting freight to rail helps at the margins, but rail cannot absorb more than a fraction of road volumes. For the next decade at least, the logistics industry runs on drivers.

Will the driver shortage get worse in 2026?

Every published projection says yes. The IRU warned in its Europe-focused report that unfilled positions could triple by 2026 if nothing changes, and the demographic numbers behind that warning have only hardened since: an aging workforce, a thin pipeline of new entrants, scheduled retirements, and freight demand that keeps growing.

Nothing on the horizon changes the direction over the next five years either. The IRU projects the European shortage to pass 745,000 drivers by 2028 as retirements accelerate. Industry bodies and the European Union have started to address the barriers (license costs, minimum driving ages, secure parking, and work permits for non EU drivers), but every serious analysis calls for a long term approach rather than a quick fix. Closing the gap is a priority for the whole transport industry. For individual drivers, the shortage is simply the market working in your favour.

For carriers, that is a serious operational problem. For working drivers, it is the opposite. When 500,000 seats are empty and 17% of the people currently filling seats will retire within a few years, every qualified driver becomes someone worth competing for.

Where do Europe’s new drivers come from?

Carriers are looking in two directions at once. Inside Europe, the industry is trying to make the profession attractive to young people and women: cutting training costs, funding CE licenses, improving safety and vehicle standards, and covering costs that used to come out of a driver’s own pocket. Retention matters as much as recruitment, because companies that cannot retain drivers end up training workers for their competitors.

Outside Europe, recruitment from third countries has moved from stopgap to structural. Drivers from India, the Philippines, Central Asia and the Balkans already keep large European fleets moving, and the IRU has pushed for faster, safer legal pathways so hiring from third countries does not depend on informal intermediaries. For the sector, access to a global driver pool is now a competitive advantage. For drivers with the right license, it means many countries are open that were closed five years ago.

What the shortage means for pay and working conditions

Scarcity moves markets, and driver labour is no exception. Labour costs have risen across the EU27, with countries including Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia and Greece seeing double-digit percentage increases in late 2024.

The real shift goes beyond salary. When transport companies compete for drivers, the whole package improves: newer trucks, more predictable schedules, proper accommodation policies, and recruiters who answer the phone. Average pay is climbing, and working conditions, from vehicle age to depot facilities, have become a genuine competitive front. In practice, a CE license holder in Warsaw, Budapest, Sofia or Hamburg can now compare offers from multiple carriers and choose on substance.

Questions worth asking any carrier right now:

• How many nights per month will I actually sleep at home?
• What is the age and safety record of the truck I will drive?
• Is my wage fully legal and documented in my employment country?
• What happens to my income when freight volumes dip?

How Baton Transport competes for drivers

At Baton Transport, we run relay trucking across our European network, with operations in Denmark, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Sweden. In a relay system, trucks keep moving while drivers hand over at fixed exchange points and return home. Our internal benchmark: a 1,300 km linehaul that takes around 30 hours in a traditional solo setup moves in about 19 hours as a relay, and the drivers involved sleep in their own beds far more often.

We also put our money behind widening the profession. Through our Trucking for Equality program and the Baton Driving Academy, we fund training and place new drivers on EU routes, including women entering the industry for the first time, because a shortage this size will not be solved by recycling the same shrinking pool of CVs.

If you already hold a CE license and want a carrier that treats the driver market like the competition it is, we would like to hear from you.

Interested in driving for Baton Transport? Submit your details here.

Frequently asked questions