How Road Feeder Services Keep Cargo Flying – and Their Digital Road Paradox Holding Them Back
Every night, hundreds of trucks leave Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, and Bucharest bound for Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Liège – each carrying air freight under an IATA flight number. To the untrained eye, they’re just road transport. To the cargo world, they are the ground layer of Europe’s air network.
RFS as the silent extension of Europe’s air network
Road Feeder Services (RFS) act as an extension of the air network – essentially flights on wheels. An estimated 30-40% of intra-European air cargo now moves this way, carrying automotive parts, electronics, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other time-critical exports. The customs-bonded trucks move under airline codes, following strict schedules that mirror short-haul flights. And although some flows move from West to East, the dominant direction runs East to West, where the main hubs provide long-haul capacity.
According to a 2025 market study by Mordor Intelligence, the European Road Feeder Services market is valued at approximately USD 7.5 billion, underscoring the scale and economic weight of these ‘flights on wheels’. (Source: Europe Road Feeder Services Market Size & Growth to 2030, Mordor Intelligence)
Why East dominates West
The RFS network grew out of necessity, not design. Airspace congestion, short-haul cost pressures, and environmental limits pushed airlines to replace feeder flights with trucks. Western Europe’s big hubs – Frankfurt (FRA), Amsterdam (AMS), Paris (CDG), Brussels (BRU), Liège (LGG) – became consolidation platforms for global cargo. Meanwhile Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) developed strong export industries but relatively few long-haul flights, feeding goods westward overnight.
Central and Eastern Europe manufacture and globally export high-value automotive components, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and machinery. Global freight forwarders such as DHL, DSV (including the DB Schenker acquisition), and Kuehne+Nagel route this cargo through their Western ‘gateway hubs’ for customs clearance and onward flights.
A typical truck from Warsaw to Frankfurt covers around 1,000 km in 11 hours, arriving before the morning long-haul departures, with major freight airlines operating extensive RFS networks across the EU. And even if trucks generate emissions, they replace short-haul flights. Industry observers estimate that a fully loaded RFS truck may carry the equivalent volume of 2-3 short-haul feeder flights – though public data does not yet document this ratio formally. The next frontier will be electric and biofuel-powered RFS fleets, and most importantly: optimized two-way utilization.
Western hubs have bonded warehousing and customs pre-clearance processes optimized for RFS handling with infrastructure maturity (e.g., automated cargo handling) enabling RFS turnaround. This gives them a competitive edge when attracting new cargo services.
Some cargo moves in reverse (West to East), but it only accounts for about 20%-30% of the RFS volume, as several e-commerce giants have distribution centers in Eastern Europe. Specialized express and high-value goods flows also move this way, but in smaller volumes.
The digital inequality problem
The strong advance in digitally managed truck arrivals, customs pre-advice, and dock scheduling has not fully translated to RFS operations. The development of APIs, geolocation systems (real-time GPS) and AI to forecast cargo arrival based on flight delay, weather, and traffic data promise to solve these problems – but often only per hub.
The digital Western advantage – Frankfurt’s Fair@Link, Amsterdam’s Smart Cargo Mainport Program, Brussels’ BRUcloud – contrasts with Eastern Europe where truck slotting is often manual or semi-automated. This digital inequality creates inefficiency across the network.
A further challenge is the fragmentation among RFS operators themselves. Europe has a mix of large road feeder providers and dozens of smaller subcontractors, each using different IT tools, processes, and communication standards. This lack of harmonization makes it difficult to create end-to-end visibility or a uniform data flow across the entire RFS chain.
The result is a patchwork system where cargo may be digitally visible at one hub, partially visible at another, and not visible at all once it leaves national borders.
A missing link: Cross-Airport Data Exchange
Airlines and airports are working to align RFS with digital air cargo initiatives like IATA ONE Record, Airport Community Systems, and SESAR data exchange. That said, the EU-level challenges – and the issues behind the failures – are clear:
- No single European airport governance framework – airports operate under national rules.
- Fragmented digital infrastructure (different data systems for slots, cargo, and customs).
- Uneven funding access – larger hubs get more EU grants, leaving smaller ones disconnected.
- A purely competitive mindset instead of adopting gain-share or co-funded projects that allow more airports to benefit from the same outcome. This is probably the most notorious obstacle and the one that needs a mindset shift.
The Future Towards a Digital Network
Imagine this case scenario:
- A driver in Sofia books a slot at Liège directly via a shared EU RFS platform.
- Customs pre-clearance travels with the digital shipment record.
- Each truck’s ETA, emissions, and cargo milestones update across systems automatically.
- Airports coordinate landside and airside flows in real time.
Eastern airports can build interoperable API-based truck slot management systems from scratch and align customs and pre-clearance with EU digital initiatives. Real-time data exchange between airports and RFS operators – with slots managed dynamically, tied to airside schedules, and supported by cross-border customs pre-clearance – would enable predictive routing and shared regional control centers. In effect, RFS moves millions of tons annually and Europe could gain a virtual air network on wheels – but only if its digital roads finally catch up with its physical ones.
