"Trucking Europe: The Triple Transformation of European Freight Forwarders since the 1980s"

In the 1990s, Central and European freight forwarders replaced the old heroes of labor from
heavy industry. Despite the legacy of rudimentary road infrastructure and a modal split
dominated by railroad transport, freight forwarders in post-socialist economies have
demonstrated high volatility under the conditions of market-economy transformation. Small
companies have emerged from the green field and developed into European champions in the
transport sector. By multiplying perspectives, an entangled history of Central and East European
road haulage reveals the decisive factors influencing this surprising development: the gradual
opening of the European common market and the simultaneous liberalization of the European
transport industry. The project focuses on the interdependencies between a democratic,
neoliberal and logistical transformation beginning in the 1980s. Selected freight forwarding
companies from the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, and the
People's Republic of Poland and their strategies vis-à-vis European integration are analyzed.
Due to the key role played by freight forwarding companies in the transnationalization of
national economies as well as the interdependence of the trajectories of the selected companies,
Central European road haulage offers a classic field for a transnational historiography of
the long and complex economic transformation of East and Central Europe.