Given this, one of the impacts will lead to a shortage of staff in the logistic sector. Experts from the road hauliers industry expect that only in Germany in the next 10 – 15 years 250.000 truck drivers will retire (= 40% of German truck drivers) (source: Wall Street Journal Deutschland, 2012), without an indication that they will be replaced by younger drivers.
Although the shortage of truck drivers might be one aspect of the ageing society, it is not plausible that this impact is mono-causally driven by the ageing society. In fact, there is a bundle of relevant reasons (wages, level of competition in Europe, job reputation, education, attractiveness of professional field, etc.). Furthermore, the ageing issue is not equally applicable for the whole EU and thus its effects differ, subject to the regional economic and social prerequisites. These fundamental issues imply the impossibility to quantify the isolated impact of the ageing society on the shortage of staff and assign it to the logistic sector.
To conclude, quantifying the complete cause-and-effect chain is not possible at this level of detail. Instead, reasonable and reliable figures regarding such specific questions at any spatial level might be derived by particular research projects.
As a result, the fact-sheet displays in which direction the effects are expected to evolve, which is illustrated by arrows within the last column ranging from a strong decrease () to a strong increase (). The colouring behind the arrows illustrates the impact on the economy, society and environment according to the overall policy targets of the EU (red: negative, green: positive, blue: inconclusive). Logistic strategies are not assessed in that sense since they are considered to be the starting point of the impact assessment.