How Much Does It Cost to Ship Freight Across Europe? LTL and FTL Pricing Explained

There's no single price list for shipping freight across Europe, but there is a clear logic behind any serious quote: the price comes from a small set of measurable variables, not a fixed rate per kilometre. Knowing them before you request a quote lets you tell a tight offer from one that's hiding something. Here are those variables, how much each one weighs, and where the surcharges nobody warns you about tend to show up.

The variables that actually set the price

• Real volume and weight. The dominant variable: it decides whether your load fits into a groupage shipment or needs a dedicated truck, and at what point a carrier starts pricing by volume rather than by weight. We cover how to calculate both accurately in our guide to calculating your shipment's volume and weight.
• Format: groupage (LTL) or full truckload (FTL). The price gap between sharing a truck and booking it outright is, by far, the biggest saving lever you have. We compare both in detail in groupage or full truck: how to choose.
• Distance and route, though it matters less than it seems: the gap between a lane with steady traffic in both directions and a peripheral route with no return load affects the price per kilometre more than the kilometre count itself.
• Regulated tolls and surcharges, which aren't set by the carrier but by national and EU rules, and which pass straight through to the invoice.
• Season and lead time. July, August, and month-end or year-end closings concentrate demand and push prices up; booking with margin is usually cheaper than booking under time pressure.

Tolls aren't arbitrary: what EU rules actually say

A large part of the variable cost of road freight isn't set by the carrier at all, but by the regulatory framework for charging heavy goods vehicles. As the European Commission explains, tolls must be levied according to the distance travelled and the type of vehicle, while vignettes are scaled by how long the infrastructure is used. Since 2024, tolls and vignettes for heavy-duty vehicles must vary based on a vehicle's CO2 emissions, and from 2026 the external cost of air pollution must also be included in tolls. In practice, this means an older, more polluting truck can pay more toll for the same stretch of road than a cleaner one, and that gap ends up reflected in the quote you receive.

Why the same shipment can cost half as much by groupage

In groupage, the cost of the run is split between several customers heading the same way, so you only pay for the space or weight you actually use. This only works well where there's steady traffic in both directions of the route: according to Eurostat, EU road freight amounted to 1,886 billion tonne-kilometres in 2025, of which only 24.4% was international transport. Cross-border lanes account for a relatively small share of total volume, which is exactly why load consolidation makes so much economic sense on them: few SMEs fill a whole trailer on their own on an international run.

A simplified example

Take 4 standard pallets, 1.1 m high each, with a combined gross weight of 900 kg, on the Germany-Belgium lane. The volume comes to roughly 4.2 m³, well under the third-of-a-trailer mark where a dedicated truck usually starts to pay off. On a lane with steady traffic like this one, groupage is almost always the cheaper option; a full truck would only be worth it if the cargo were fragile, had a fixed delivery date, or couldn't share space for temperature or ADR reasons.

Mistakes that quietly inflate the price

• Declaring an estimated volume or weight instead of a measured one; the correction at loading rarely works in your favour.
• Not flagging access restrictions at pickup or delivery (narrow streets, no loading dock), which turn into handling surcharges once the truck is already on route.
• Requesting a quote with very little notice in peak season, when available capacity is tighter and the price rises from scarcity, not from the shipment itself.
• Comparing only the price per kilometre between offers without checking what each one actually includes: loading and unloading, insurance, number of transfers.

Next step

The first step towards a tight quote is measuring your shipment properly instead of guessing it — we walk through that in our guide to calculating your shipment's volume and weight. If your cargo doesn't fill a full truck, our LTL groupage service across Europe splits the cost with other shipments on your route, saving up to 45% against a dedicated truck. Send us origin, destination, volume and weight, and we'll come back with a preliminary quote in 15-30 minutes, no obligation.