In April, May, and June (Q2) 2025, a total of 43.6 million tonnes of goods were transported by road, compared with 42.9 million tonnes in Q2 2024.
The commodity group Quarry Products, Metal Ores & Peat represented 22% of all tonnes carried by road in Q2 2025.
Vehicles involved in the Delivery of Goods to Road Works or Building Sites carried 16,174,000 tonnes in Q2 2025, which at 37% of the total tonnes carried, was the highest among all types of work carried out by goods vehicles.
In Q2 2025, the total distance covered by road freight transport was 562 million kilometres, up 20% compared with the same period in 2024.
Please note following a review of the Quarter 1 2025 Road Freight Transport release, published on 28 August 2025, significant issues were identified in the processing and compilation of the data.
As a result, on 05 February 2026 the Q1 data were revised. These revisions affect all content throughout the Q1 release, including tables, charts and accompanying text but have no impact on the data in this release. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
| Road freight activity, Quarter 2 2021-2025 | ||||||
| Q2 2021 | Q2 2022 | Q2 2023 | Q2 2024 | Q2 2025 | % change Q2 2024 - Q2 2025 | |
| Tonne-km (million) | 3,225 | 3,364 | 3,278 | 3,511 | 3,885 | 11 |
| Tonnes carried (thousand) | 39,974 | 40,875 | 45,703 | 42,931 | 43,599 | 2 |
| Vehicle kilometres (million) | 426 | 464 | 453 | 469 | 562 | 20 |
| Laden journeys (thousand) | 3,191 | 3,516 | 3,539 | 3,689 | 4,187 | 13 |
Figure 1 shows that in Q2 2025, a total of 43,599,000 tonnes of goods were transported by road. This represents an increase of 2% on the Q2 2024 total and a fall of 5% on the Q2 2023 total.
Figure 2 shows that the commodity group Quarry Products, Metal Ores & Peat represented 22% of all tonnes carried. This was the largest share among the categories of commodity groups in the survey with 9,426,000 tonnes carried.
Figure 3 shows that vehicles involved in the Delivery of Goods to Road Works or Building Sites carried 16,174,000 tonnes in Q2 2025, which at 37% of the total tonnes carried, was the highest among all types of work carried out by goods vehicles.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (05 February 2026) published results from the Road Freight Transport Survey for Quarter 2 (Q2) 2025.
Commenting on the figures, Damien Lenihan, Statistician in the Transport Division, said, “The figures show that in April, May, and June (Q2) 2025, a total of 43.6 million tonnes of goods were transported by road, which is an increase of 2% on the Q2 2024 total (See Headline table).
Activity measured as weight by distance, or tonne-kilometres (tkm), was 3,885 million tkm in Q2 2025. This was a rise of 11% when compared with the 3,511 million tkm recorded in Q2 2024.”
The total distance covered by road freight transport in Q2 2025 was 562 million kilometres, up 20% compared with Q2 2024. The commodity groups that contributed most to vehicle kilometres were Other Goods and Foodstuffs.”