TRANSPORT Management 113

As usual, I would like to share with you my impressions on some topics that have dominated the news in our sector in recent weeks. Do not hesitate to enrich my impressions with your comments/criticisms/remarks…

Increase in the cost of transport: a record! Never before has the ITLB published such high forecasts, with an increase of between 5.21% and 6.42% depending on the type of connection. This will come as no surprise, given all the explosively increased cost items, whether it concerns the price of diesel, the price of Adblue or vehicles, or even insurance premiums. And then we haven't even mentioned the indexation of wages, the decrease in the recoverable amount of excise duties for professional diesel, the indexation of the Walloon kilometre charge, increases in the price of toll roads in various European countries... It can slowly stop.

Fortunately, the same observation applies to the sales price. For example, during the third quarter of 2021, the price of transport increased by 3.2%. In France, transport on the Upply marketplace is invoiced at more than €1.43/km. This increase should continue in 2022, at least at the beginning of the year, sometimes with much greater proportions. A major Belgian transporter, active in a niche with added value, recently confided to me that he was negotiating a price increase for next year of 10 to 15%.

Where are the bankruptcies? Of course, you won't hear us complaining about that, but the tsunami of bankruptcies in the road transport sector, which some doomsayers predicted, has not materialised. Figures from Graydon show that only 97 companies went bankrupt during the corona year 2020, compared to 161 in 2019. We see the same trend in the first quarter of 2021, with only 34 companies going bankrupt in our country. Of course, the various measures taken by the government explain these positive figures. Will the gradual lifting of the measures mean the death sentence for many transporters? Probably not in our sector, emphasises Febetra director Philippe Degraef in an interview with one of our journalists: "Our companies have always continued to operate during the crisis. Today, there is even a lot of work. Last year, the supply chain was disrupted, trucks were not always full and profitability suffered. This year, activity has recovered and since the third quarter, it has even been going very well. If bankruptcies occur in the coming months, they will not be in our sector.” Let us assume that!