France road freight loaded journeys: vehicle-km
France road freight loaded journeys: vehicle-km stood at 14,276 million vehicle-km in 2025, according to SDES – Service des données et études statistiques (Ministère de la Transition écologique). It is one of the indicators in the Freight transport (annual) table (Value · Annual), with a complete series running from 1999 to 2025. The complete series with an interactive chart, free to download.
This indicator in the Freight transport (annual) table
| Indicator | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicle-kilometres | |||||||||||
| Loaded journeys | 14,276 | 14,154 | 13,807 | 13,990 | 14,113 | 13,822 | 14,173 | 13,863 | 14,032 | 13,510 | |
| Empty journeys | 2,975 | 3,009 | 2,964 | 2,958 | 3,065 | 2,920 | 2,995 | 3,030 | 3,110 | 3,336 |
Understanding france road freight loaded journeys: vehicle-km
Isolating distance accumulated strictly while transporting physical merchandise, this indicator records the operational mileage of commercial goods vehicles engaged in revenue-earning or direct delivery missions. The metric excludes all empty running, positioning trips, and unladen returns, ensuring the figures reflect only productive journeys where cargo occupies the loading bay. By filtering out non-revenue transit, the series provides a pure measure of productive fleet mobility across the network, separating active delivery legs from necessary logistical repositioning.
Assessing annual shifts in loaded travel requires analyzing fleet efficiency and supply chain patterns rather than simple changes in vehicle counts. Year-on-year comparisons offer a reliable baseline by smoothing out structural shifts in distribution networks, while preliminary annual estimates remain subject to revision pending final administrative audits. Analysts comparing this series against total vehicle distance can evaluate industry productivity by observing the ratio of loaded journeys to empty return trips across commercial fleets over time.
Frequently asked questions
- Are empty return trips included in this loaded journey metric?
- No, unladen transit and repositioning kilometres are strictly excluded from this specific series.
- Why is this measure useful for analyzing logistics efficiency?
- It isolates productive transport work from empty running, allowing analysts to monitor changes in fleet utilization rates.
- How does this series relate to total vehicle-kilometres?
- Loaded journeys form a subset of total vehicle-kilometres, representing only the portion of travel performed with physical cargo onboard.