Fuel Price Spikes and a Wave of Bankruptcies: Why the Transport Market Is Swinging Back to the Carrier

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Piotr Skobało explains why, after two years of cheap transport, 2026 could mean a return to a carrier's market. He covers how rising fuel prices and a wave of transport company bankruptcies are reshaping carrier availability.

FUEL CAN BE AS MUCH AS 40% OF A CARRIER'S COSTS

A sudden jump in fuel prices (Orlen raised wholesale prices by over 10% almost immediately after geopolitical tensions rose) hits exactly where it hurts most — road transport's cost structure, where fuel makes up 25-40% depending on the type of fleet. Most Polish transport companies operated on an EBITA of around 2-4% in 2024, many large ones close to zero — there's practically no margin to absorb a shock like this. A key distinction: EBITA can still be slightly positive, while many carriers' net profit is already negative — and a large share of micro transport companies judge their health purely by their bank balance, not real profitability.

THE WAVE OF BANKRUPTCIES AS A SYMPTOM, NOT A CAUSE

In 2025, Poland recorded over 550 formal transport company bankruptcies (207 in the first half, another 350+ in the second), and the whole industry's debt reached nearly 2 billion PLN. These are mostly micro-companies — not big players like Girteka or InPost — but cost pressure is felt at every scale. History shows a cycle: the driver shortage crisis around the turn of 2020, then a reversal in 2022-2023, and now another wave of tension — the transport industry goes through a clear crisis roughly every 10-12 years, and the ability to learn from the previous cycle decides who survives the next one.

WHOSE PROBLEM IS IT: THE CARRIER'S OR THE BUYER'S?

A key shift in perspective: a transport supplier's cost structure isn't just their own problem — it's also a risk for the client ordering from them. A company buying transport services without understanding that structure (and without fuel clauses or indexation) risks losing a partner overnight — either to bankruptcy, or to them leaving for a competitor offering fairer terms. Visible signs of the "carrier's market" returning: shrinking offer validity periods (from 30 to 14 days), a growing number of rejected spot-market orders, and carriers increasingly reluctant to sign long-term contracts.

THREE SAFEGUARDS FOR TRANSPORT BUYERS

First, contractual predictability — clear rules set in advance for 12 months (fuel clauses, indexation) instead of winning a few percent every month on the spot market, which becomes unmanageable at high volume with many partners. Second, carrier due diligence — checking whether a company will actually survive before entrusting it with your cargo. Third, diversifying the carrier base: if one partner exceeds 30% of your transport volume, concentration risk becomes real — "a stool is stable when it has at least three legs."

FOR CARRIERS: A SIGNAL TO CLEAN UP CONTRACTS

Transport companies with no contracts, or weak contractual terms, just got hard proof of why that doesn't pay off — you can't run a mature organization while fully absorbing rising fuel costs with no mechanism to pass them on to the client. The recommendation for both sides: treat the current crisis as a repeating pattern, not an exception, and build contract structures resilient to the next one, because another cycle will come sooner or later.