Thousands of trucks are once again queuing up at the exits from Ukraine to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. This is happening at the height of the season when the largest trade between Ukraine and the EU is taking place. The reason was not only the increased demand for freight transportation, when more trucks went on trips. It was also due to repairs at almost all checkpoints: installation of new scales, replacement of road surfaces, and painting of sheds.
Oleksandr Kyryliuk, Chief Operating Officer of ZAMMLER GROUP, told more about the situation at the checkpoints and its consequences for the Ukrainian economy in an article for Forbes Ukraine.
The busiest checkpoints are on the border with Poland: Krakivets – Korchova, Rava-Ruska – Krebenne, Shehyni – Medyka, Yahodyn – Dorohusk and even Ustyluh – Zosyn, where empty heavy trucks run.
According to the electronic system “E-Chezha ,” each route has from 600 to more than 2,000 vehicles. And to export any products of animal and plant origin, you will have to stand in a separate queue for more than 2 weeks.
At the border with Slovakia and Hungary, trucks also wait 5-7 days, with a slightly better situation only at the Romanian border – up to 4 days in line.
Long waiting times are already leading to price increases. Over the past week alone, the price of transportation from Poland to Ukraine has increased by 10-15%. The shortage of transportation will also increase. There will be no timely delivery to the end customer either in the EU or in Ukraine.
Under normal conditions, without border blockades and complications, the truck makes three color runs to Poland and back in a month. Now it can do one to two. If the waiting time is two weeks, one truck will be able to make only one trip.
At the same time, there are still fixed costs, such as leasing, driver’s salary, administrative expenses, and depreciation. With two-week queues, the price of freight transportation will at least double.
“It is not the best decision to repair the PP right now. Logistics is a seasonal business, and the high season will last until the end of December. Those responsible for this step probably did not analyze the freight market. The situation is also complicated by failures in the customs system, mostly on the Polish side. Technical problems can last from eight hours to a day,” said Oleksandr Kyryliuk.
For Ukrainian businesses, the queues result not only in economic losses. Failure to leave Ukraine on time threatens to break supply chains, lose contracts and markets. In the long run, these are strategic risks and reputational losses for the country.
Two to three weeks of waiting for exports from Ukraine is a critical time for many industries. Therefore, Ukrainian businesses are even forced to move production to EU countries to fulfill their obligations to recipients.
Ukrainian logisticians suffered from low border crossing capacity even before the full-scale war, and since 2022 the problem has become critical. After all, most of the freight transportation was carried out by road. The situation has not changed since then.
“Yes, some additional checkpoints were opened for empty trucks. However, they were not exporting exports, they were just going to Europe to pick up cargo. In 2.5 years, these checkpoints have not been re-equipped to allow for the passage of loaded trucks. And the expansion of the Krakivets and Yahodyn checkpoints did not improve the situation,” said ZAMMLER GROUP’s COO.
The problem requires systemic solutions – the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects. We are talking about building new checkpoints and expanding existing ones.
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