*There will be a decline in the market for heavy trailers in East Europe in 2025
CLEAR International has just issued its October 2025 forecast for the East European Heavy Trailer Market.
Turkey recently had four years of trailer market growth from 2020 to 2023 and set new records for trailer sales in the last two of those years. A downward adjustment in new trailer demand was expected in 2024 but a further large downward shift in sales in 2025 was not anticipated.
Similarly Russia has had a very strong trailer market in 2023 and 2024 after the government invested in transport assets to help prosecute its war in Ukraine. Again a slowdown was expected in 2025 but a larger downturn is now forecast.
Whilst the other thirteen East European countries covered in the report have sales tracking much as expected at the beginning of the year, the adjustments to the forecasts for Turkey and Russia mean that a fall in trailer demand of over 10% is now predicted in 2025 for the region.
The reasons for this weakness are tolerably obvious: The war in Ukraine has led to a fall in business confidence which has manifested itself as a lack of willingness to increase investment in new transport equipment such as trailers and trucks.
Another factor is the trade tariffs imposed by the US which have further damaged business confidence and led to the postponement or cancellation of the investment plans of businesses on a global basis.
2023 had record demand for new trailers, with the East European market exceeding 110,000 units by a clear margin. Turkey had sensational levels of trailer sales. Arguably there are now plenty of new trailers in the regional fleet. It will take until 2028 for the trailer demand of 2023 to be matched.
Another dampening factor is that since 2022q4 the demand for road transport in Eastern Europe (measured in tonne-km) has stopped growing. It had been increasing in a linear fashion for the last twenty years, but even Poland, which has the highest road transport demand in Europe, had a 2.7% fall in demand in 2023. In the whole of Europe this was only exceeded by Germany which had a fall of 5.8%. In 2024 road transport demand in the region was flat which may indicate that some growth is possible in 2025.
Likewise import and export trade in Eastern Europe, measured in US$, had been falling since 2022, but in the second half of 2024 trade first stabilised then started to grow, meaning that further growth in the future is likely.
The outlook for 2026 is for a return to growth after a difficult environment in 2024/25. Eleven of the fifteen countries in the region will see some growth, and the falls in other countries will be minor. More substantial growth is anticipated in 2027/28.
Gary Beecroft, director of CLEAR International commented, “After a disappointing 2025 the recovery will start in 2026. In 2027 there will be substantial growth and 2028 could provide a year of record breaking trailer demand.”
Background
77% of all goods in Europe are moved by road and most of that proportion is transported in a trailer.
The East European Trailer Market Report (October 2025), with forecasts to 2029, can be obtained from CLEAR International using the contact details below. A new report for the West European market was issued in May 2025. A Global Trailer Market Database is also available.