In 2025, a total of 169.1 million tonnes of goods were transported by road, an increase of 2% when compared with 2024.
The commodity group Quarry Products, Metal Ores & Peat represented almost a quarter (23%) of all tonnes of freight carried by road in 2025.
The total distance travelled by road freight transport vehicles in 2025 was 2.1 billion kilometres, compared with 1.9 billion kilometres in 2024.
Tonne-kilometres (tkm), a measure which combines both kilometres travelled and tonnes carried, increased by 10% to almost 15.0 billion tkm in 2025 from 13.6 billion tkm in 2024.
In October, November, and December (Q4) 2025, the tonnage of goods transported by road fell by 4% to 37.3 million tonnes from 39.0 million tonnes carried in Q4 2024.
Freight vehicle kilometres travelled increased from 440 million km in Q4 2024 to 456 million km in Q4 2025.
In 2025, 99% of road freight transport vehicles used diesel as their fuel type. Only 1% of road freight vehicles used either Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) or a combination of diesel and HVO.
| Road freight activity, 2021-2025 | ||||||
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | % change 2024 - 2025 | |
| Tonne-km (million) | 12,485 | 12,384 | 12,596 | 13,575 | 14,950 | 10 |
| Tonnes carried (thousand) | 154,900 | 164,258 | 165,165 | 165,206 | 169,117 | 2 |
| Vehicle kilometres (million) | 1,685 | 1,788 | 1,823 | 1,896 | 2,112 | 11 |
| Laden journeys (thousand) | 13,092 | 13,814 | 14,759 | 14,636 | 16,232 | 11 |
In 2025, a total of 169.1 million tonnes of goods were transported by road. This was an increase of 2% on both the 2024 and 2023 figures, and an increase of 3% on the 2022 figure.
The commodity groups that contributed most to kilometres travelled by road transport vehicles in 2025 were the miscellaneous category Other Goods and Foodstuffs.
Goods vehicles involved in delivering materials to road works or building sites carried 63.0 million tonnes in 2025, the highest tonnage recorded among all categories of work carried out by road transport vehicles.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (28 May 2026) published results from the Road Freight Transport Survey for Quarter 4 (Q4) and Year 2025.
Commenting on the data, Damien Lenihan, Statistician in the Transport Section of the CSO, said: “Today’s figures show a 2% rise in the weight of goods transported by road from 2024, reaching 169.1 million tonnes in 2025. (See Table 1B).
Tonne-kilometres (tkm), which is a combined measure of kilometres travelled and tonnes of goods carried, reached almost 15.0 billion in 2025, up 10% from the 13.6 billion recorded in 2024.
The total distance travelled by road freight transport vehicles in 2025 was 2.1 billion kilometres. This was an increase of 11% on the 1.9 billion kilometres travelled in 2024. While the miscellaneous commodity group ‘Other Goods’ accounted for 980 million km (46%) of vehicle kilometres, it accounted for only 11%, or 19.1 million tonnes of total goods carried by weight. Conversely, the commodity group Quarry Products, Metal Ores and Peat at 39.4 million tonnes contributed most to the tonnes carried (23% of total weight carried) but only accounted for 4% (79 million) of the total kilometres travelled. (See Table 2).
Looking at Q4 2025, there were 37.3 million tonnes of goods carried, which was a decline of 4% when compared with Q4 2024. Tonne-kilometres recorded in Q4 2025 were comparable with Q4 2024 at 3.4 billion meaning that road freight activity hasn’t significantly changed.
There were 456 million kilometres travelled by road freight transport vehicles in Q4 2025, which was up 4% compared with 440 million travelled in Q4 2024 (See Table 1A).”