Some 2.47 million goods vehicles travelled from Great Britain to mainland Europe last year – four per cent higher than in 2009 total, according to figures from the Department for Transport.
The biggest growth was in unaccompanied trailers – up ten per cent to 673,000. IN contrast, the growth for powered vehicles was only two per cent – to 1.79m.
The DfT said that since the early 1990s “there has been a significant rise in the number of foreign registered powered vehicles, from 394 thousand in 1992 to 1.41m in 2010”.
Of these foreign registered vehicles 250,000 were Polish-registered, followed by the Netherlands (194,000), Germany (152,000) and France (132,000).
In the fourth quarter of 2010 619,000 goods vehicles travelled from Great Britain to mainland Europe, an increase of two per cent on the previous year.
