The European strategies of road freight operators: myths and realities[Stratégies européennes des opérateurs de transport de fret : mythes ou réalités ?]

Should we believe the allegations of their managers, often echoed without much thin-king by the Press, Road Haulage Carriers are always n° 1 or likely to be n° 1. Some claim they are leaders in the trade i.e. leaders in the parcels service, transport of refrigerated goods or bulk tanker. Some even claim they are the best in everything! Others try to differentiate from the rest of the crowd. They claim to be the best through the quality of service, their technical competence or their data processing System. Last but not least, those who could not assert they were on the top of the scale, will maintain they are "leaders in the region". The so-called region doesn't stretch from the United Kingdom to Spain or even from Lille to Marseille, but from Aurillac to Tulle and from Chateaubriand to Redon. There's no doubt that "in the kingdom of tube blind, tube one-eyed is King". Out of the 37,000 firms we reckoned in the transport sector, 27,000, perhaps more, are just fighting to survive. May be we are too narrow-minded, we are however much concerned about the peremptory assertion of the existence of 10,000 "leaders". We are led to believe that they are the product of a megalomaniac lunacy rather than of the strategies reality of the sector. In this paper we have carried out on the subject, we have tried to sort out the many assertions and bring out the many strategies set by French firms, in order to play a part in the European competition.