The Road to the East Is Closing: Why Eastern Europe Can No Longer Keep Germany's Truck Moving (part 3)

For twenty years, drivers from Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine and Belarus filled the gaps in German logistics. Today those countries are short of drivers themselves, their hauliers are under financial strain, and German operators are being drawn into a global contest for talent.

Stand on any bridge over the A9 north of Munich at dawn and count the number plates. Polish. Lithuanian. Romanian. Many of the trucks carrying Bavarian freight are registered further east, and the drivers behind the wheel often come from Kraków, Kaunas, Lviv or Minsk.

For two decades, that was German logistics' quiet solution to a loud problem. When a German driver retired, Eastern Europe filled the seat. That arrangement is now breaking down, faster than many operators realise.

In Part 2 of this series, we calculated what an empty driver's seat costs. Here we look at why the traditional source of replacements is drying up, and who is building the alternative.

The supplier has become a competitor

Poland, the backbone of European road haulage, now faces a shortage of its own. According to the Polish Transport & Logistics Association (TLP), the country entered 2026 short of around 110,000 heavy-goods-vehicle drivers, roughly a fifth of total demand. The Polish Economic Institute forecasts that 326 of the country's 380 districts will struggle to find drivers this year. The demographics mirror Germany's: under-25s make up just three per cent of Polish truck drivers, while a third are over 55.

The country that once exported drivers is now importing them.

The war that emptied the cabs

Polish carriers had themselves come to depend on drivers from Ukraine and Belarus. Before Russia's full-scale invasion, around 105,000 Ukrainians were working as international transport drivers in Poland. Shortly after the war began, the haulage association ZMPD reported that tens of thousands had gone home.

Conscription and tighter security vetting have since narrowed that pool further. Ukrainians and Belarusians still make up around 80 per cent of non-EU drivers at Polish companies, but the search has moved on: more than 7,000 drivers from Central Asia, India and the Philippines joined the Polish transport sector in the past year alone.

Carriers under strain

The money is tightening too. More than 1,000 Polish transport companies were reported to have gone into administration in the first half of 2026. Hauliers in eastern Poland have lost business with Belarus and Russia to sanctions, while the EU Mobility Package and carbon-pricing reforms due in 2027 are driving up costs.

For German operators relying on Eastern European subcontractors, the result is tighter capacity, higher rates and less reliability, exactly when they can least afford it.

A global race for drivers

The contest for drivers now spans continents. In April, Lithuania's Vlantana Logistics confirmed it would bring in up to 200 truck drivers from Brazil and neighbouring countries. The largest Eastern European operators run their own academies abroad.

"Germany is no longer recruiting from a surplus next door. It is competing in a global market for drivers, against carriers that have been doing this for years," says Dominic Weil, business development manager at Code 95 Plus, the logistics division of international recruitment group Takt Group. "The operators who come through this well will be the ones who build their own pipeline, rather than waiting for one to appear."

There is a subtler problem, too. Many non-EU drivers enter Europe through Poland, but qualified for Europe is not the same as ready for Germany. A driver who cannot follow a German dispatcher, read a German delivery note or answer questions at a German roadside check is a risk, however good their driving. In practice, language often decides whether a driver stays or leaves.

From recruiter to infrastructure

This is where the model is shifting, and Code 95 Plus has moved further than most. Rather than waiting for drivers to arrive through intermediaries, it recruits experienced heavy-vehicle drivers directly in India and Southeast Asia, and has now expanded recruitment and training into North Africa and South America.

Behind that sits an investment of more than €2 million in a state-of-the-art training facility, equipped with international trucks and driving simulators, where drivers are prepared to European standards before they ever see a German road.

The preparation is layered. Through a partnership with a leading accredited Code 95 training centre in Germany, drivers complete online regulatory training in their home countries, covering EU drivers' hours, tachograph rules and the professional knowledge the Code 95 qualification demands. Alongside it, language partner Auxila has opened its own school in India, teaching job-specific German to B1 level: enough to follow workplace instructions and hold everyday conversations independently.

What sets the model apart for operators is transparency. Clients can watch their future drivers training live and review mock Code 95 test results before departure. They know who is coming, and how ready they are. Drivers arrive prepared to pass their German tests quickly and start working, while Code 95 Plus handles licensing, visas, documentation and relocation as a single point of contact.

"I never wanted to build another recruitment agency," says Raaj Singh, CEO of Takt Group, who conceived the training programme. "Germany doesn't have a shortage of CVs. It has a shortage of drivers who are ready to work. So we invested in the infrastructure to produce them: the trucks, the simulators, the classrooms and the language school. We want to be part of the industry's supply chain, not a middleman in it."

The questions that remain

International recruitment has its critics. Trade unions have warned of "social dumping" if third-country drivers are employed on worse terms than local staff, and shippers increasingly audit how their carriers' drivers were recruited.

Those concerns raise the bar for everyone. Code 95 Plus says ethical recruitment is a core principle of its model, and its replacement guarantee during the six-month probation period protects operators if a placement does not work out.

The end of an era

Eastern European drivers will not disappear from German roads overnight. But the era in which Germany could count on its neighbours to absorb its shortfall is over; the countries that once supplied drivers now compete for them.

For German operators, the choice is stark: keep bidding for a shrinking pool, or work with partners who are building a trained, transparent pipeline from the parts of the world where drivers are still available.

Next in Germany's Empty Seats: we sit down with Dominik Weil of Code 95 Plus to ask where Germany's next generation of drivers will come from, and what operators most often get wrong when they recruit abroad.

About Code 95 Plus: Code 95 Plus is the logistics division of Takt Group, an international recruitment company operating across Europe and Southeast Asia. It recruits, trains and relocates professional drivers from India, Southeast Asia, North Africa and South America for European transport operators, supported by its own €2 million-plus training facility in India, an accredited German Code 95 training partner and language training to B1 level by its partner Auxila. Email: contact@code95plus.com

Photo by Haris Illahi on Unsplash