A record bankruptcy wave meets a compliance deadline nobody was ready for.
At the same time when Europe's freight outlook is beginning to improve, the companies providing the capacity are facing a very different set of pressures.
The EU transportation and storage bankruptcy index reached 259.5 in the second quarter of 2026, the highest level since Eurostat began tracking the series in 2015.
Belgium provides one of the clearest examples.
What should matter particularly to freight forwarders is the profile of those companies. According to ITLB, 58% of the businesses that failed had already been operating for more than five years.
These were not exclusively newly established operators without a track record. Many were precisely the kind of companies that could look familiar and dependable based on previous business relationships. That does not make historical experience irrelevant. It does mean that a carrier's history cannot automatically be treated as evidence of its current financial position.
The situation is also far from uniform across Europe. In England and Wales, road freight and removal insolvencies between January and July were around 13% lower than during the same period in 2025. Across the EU, however, several transport markets recorded sharp increases in bankruptcy declarations.
Freight forwarders managing international subcontractor networks are therefore not dealing with one European carrier market moving in one direction. They are operating across countries with increasingly different economic conditions and risk profiles.
The compliance environment changed at the same time
Another major change entered into force on 1 July. Key EU Mobility Package requirements now apply to light commercial vehicles between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes when they are used in cross-border transport. Depending on the operation, these vehicles are now subject to tachograph requirements, EU driving and rest-time rules and rules concerning the posting of drivers.
The principle itself is not particularly surprising. International commercial road transport should be subject to comparable social and compliance standards even when the vehicle falls below traditional heavy-truck weight classes.
The level of preparation, however, was much more concerning. An IRU survey found that only 27.7% of affected operators considered themselves ready for the deadline, while 46.5% said they were not yet prepared. At the time of the survey, 88% of the affected fleet still required a tachograph retrofit.
That means two developments are happening at once. Established transport businesses are disappearing from parts of the European market at unusually high rates, while another transport segment has entered a considerably more demanding compliance regime.
For forwarders assigning loads, the information that matters is therefore becoming increasingly time-sensitive.
A company may still exist while its financial position has changed substantially. Insurance can expire, company management can change, employees can leave and documents require renewal. A subcontractor that was compliant when it entered the network may now operate under requirements that did not exist at the time of onboarding.
Fraud adds another financial risk
Official insolvency data naturally focuses on factors such as costs, wages, tolls and economic conditions. Fraud does not normally appear as a separate reason for a transport company's financial distress. Yet individual fraud losses can have exactly that effect.
German transport insurance broker FSA24 documented a case in March 2026 involving a mid-sized freight forwarder that assigned consumer electronics worth more than €1 million to what appeared to be a legitimate Eastern European carrier sourced through a freight exchange.
According to the broker's case study, the licence, insurance documentation and other presented credentials were fabricated. The cargo was collected and disappeared. The forwarder's own insurance subsequently reduced the claim because its subcontractor-selection process was considered insufficient, leaving the company in a severely weakened financial position.
Another case that reached the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf involved more than €1.8 million worth of cigarettes lost to a fake Czech subcontractor. Although insurance coverage existed, the court still allowed a 30% reduction for gross negligence in the selection of the subcontractor.
For an industry operating on narrow margins, a six-figure uninsured loss is not simply an unpleasant claims event. It can threaten the business itself.
Carrier vetting can no longer stop at onboarding
For years, carrier vetting was often treated as a relatively static process. A company was checked when the relationship began, licence and insurance documents were collected, the information was stored and the carrier remained approved until the next scheduled review.
The problem is not that the original check was meaningless. The problem is that the facts behind it can change.
What freight forwarders increasingly need is therefore not proof that a carrier was checked at some point in the past. They need a sufficiently current picture at the moment the transport decision is made.
That means being able to establish whether the company identity still matches independent sources, whether relevant licence and insurance information remains current, whether meaningful company or financial signals have changed and whether the person acting for the carrier can actually be linked to that business and is authorised to represent it.
Where driver verification is relevant, the same principle applies to the identity of the driver and the professional documentation linked to that person.
This does not mean rebuilding every due-diligence process from zero before every transport. Quite the opposite. Reliable verification becomes more useful when it can be reused, provided the information behind it does not simply remain frozen at the date of onboarding.
“The more useful question for carrier management in 2026 is therefore no longer simply “Have we checked this company before?” It is “Is what we know about this company still true today?””
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