From the road haulier’s perspective, a significant pressure from vehicle suppliers, the government, forwarders and shippers to incorporate these new applications into their operations has put additional strain on their already tight
profit margins. They often cannot develop their own technical competence. Consequently, they risk being forced to invest in several costly systems with overlapping functionality in order to fulfil certain needs of their strong counter parts Stefansson & Woxenius, 2007). In that case, this could incur a cost for the road haulier, which are not offset by additional revenues. The European Commission and project partners have spent significant resources in development and standardization of ICT and ITS for freight transport (e.g. in the projects EASYWAY, SMARTFREIGHT, FREIGHTWISE, e-Freight, EURIDICE and iCargo). The ITS Action Plan adopted (European Parliament and the Council, 2010) also aims at reducing this risk. The ITS and route efficiency measure brings benefits to all actors, but the outcome is somewhat more uncertain for the road haulier because of the risk of investing in ITS without being able to implement and use them efficiently.