Experts estimate, that about 60,000 tachographs remain to be replaced in Poland, and only about 300 service points are able to provide professional installation and calibration. About 25,000 new tachographs need to be installed in Romania, slightly fewer in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In the entire EU, international transport is carried out by nearly 900,000 trucks, so we are dealing with a huge operation.
In Spain, Benelux countries and Germany, the installation of new equipment is already advanced, but this is not the case everywhere. Some of the smaller transport companies are delaying replacement because they are anticipating the need to scale down their business next year. They forget that soon they will be standing in a long queue, and the installation will be much more expensive, says Samuel Kojzarek, sales director of Lontex Group, the largest importer of tachographs in Poland.
There will be no subsidy
Some carriers postponed the installation of new tachographs because they were waiting for the governments’ decision on subsidizing the purchase. But in most countries, except for Spain and Germany, such subsidies have proved impossible. The Polish Ministry of Transport officially announced, for example, that there are no budget funds available to support transport companies. Thus, it is a signal to carriers not to delay the replacement. Because it is unlikely that the European Commission will postpone the replacement deadlines, says Artur Kalisiak, director of strategic projects at the Transport and Logistics Employers’ Association of Poland.
The lack of a new tachograph to replace an analog device or a 1st generation tachograph (prior to June 2019) will result in severe penalties throughout Europe. In Germany, where the most important transport routes pass through, DSRC sensors have long been installed on major roads to quickly catch a vehicle without a new tachograph. Currently, all road inspections in the EU are equipped with these devices.
Long queues to service points
There are no queues in the service points for now, but this will change soon. – Otherwise, some vehicles simply won’t get on the road. If, for example, a carrier signs a contract for freight at the beginning of the year, but does not have a new tachograph, they will wait several weeks for its replacement. And they can pay up to 100% more for the service, warns Samuel Kojzarek from Lontex Group.
Queues at European service centers will be even longer next year, because the next deadline for replacing tachographs is August 19, 2025. By then, all trucks in international transport will have to have second-generation smart tachographs. The first-generation G2V1 smart tachographs, which were installed from June 2019 to August 2023 in new vehicles, will also disappear.
