A lot of people ask me what the average cost impact will be resulting from the road charging for trucks that will start on April 1, 2016 in Belgium. There is one certainty: the cost increase will be significant!

Average cost increase

We can of course perfectly calculate the average impact on costs by simulating all shipments during a whole day/month/year and just applying the tariffs depending on the type of truck driving the load and the specific tariffs per type of road. That's easy.

ITLB predicts 2016 transport cost to increase + 0.87% without Belgian road tax (so called "kilometerheffing"), and + 8.88 % incl. Belgian road tax. Although the specific cost varies a lot per route or truck type.

Costs vary per route

This is all very interesting information. However, an average % cost increase is not usable in practice. The cost increase per route just varies too much.

Let me give a couple of examples:

Road charging example: Brussels & Flanders

Road charging example: Brussels & Wallonia

Road charging example: Flanders & Wallonia

Conundra's Road Tax Simulator

Conundra makes an online tool available where you can calculate the road tax for your route.

Just fill out your name and email and you can simulate the road tax for 25 routes. Go to the simulator, fill out your departure, destination location and type of truck and immediately see the additional tax cost for your specific route.