There are 130,000 truck drivers in the Czech Republic, but with the current pace of the economy, the country would need another 15,000 to meet demand. The result, reports aktualne.cz, is that companies are having increasing difficulties in keeping up with the volume of deliveries required. The director for Institute for Highway Transport Tomáš Bicera says that transportation companies are raising wages as a result. Last year, they rose a reported 15 percent. Competitors from other countries in CEE are trying to take advantage of the situation, especially in countries where such companies are the benficiaries of government support. Czech transport companies, he warns, “are gradually being pushed out of their positions primarily by Polish transporters who enjoy support from their government and who thanks to the removal of bureaucratic barriers were able to attract and employ tens of thousands of employees, mostly from Ukraine.
