Staff shortages in logistics: not just drivers
The shortage of drivers is nothing new, but it extends well beyond the cab. Planners, freight forwarders and other operational roles are equally difficult to fill. Outflow exceeds inflow, and that is not going to reverse quickly. In practice, this means the people who are available have to do more: more planning, more coordination, more information processing. That information burden is growing at precisely the wrong time, with more legislation, more reporting obligations and more parties demanding digital collaboration. At the same time, SRA research covering 2025 shows that logistics as a sector recorded a profit increase of five percent, outperforming construction and retail. The margin is there, but it is fragile the moment costs rise further and headcount shrinks.
What the Wtta changes in practice for client companies in logistics
The Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling van arbeidskrachten formally takes effect on 1 January 2027, but the registration period for staffing agencies without an SNA certificate already opens in November 2026. This directly affects the logistics sector: many transport companies structurally rely on agency workers for drivers and warehouse staff. From 1 July 2027, as a client company you may only work with agencies listed in the public NAU register. If you do not comply, or if you work with a non-approved agency, you are in violation as the client company and risk an administrative fine from the Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie. In logistics, this can also lead to a shutdown order. The practical consequence: you need to know right now which agencies you use, whether they are registering and whether your administration tracks this. If that information is scattered across emails and separate files, compliance checks will be impossible later.
Road user charge: what does a trip actually cost now?
Since 1 July 2026, the road user charge applies to virtually all motorways and part of the N-roads. The average rate is twenty cents per kilometre, but the heavier and more polluting the truck, the higher the tariff. Electric trucks up to 4,250 kilograms are exempt. For a transport company running diesel vehicles, this means a direct increase in cost per trip. Anyone calculating quotes based on old rate cards or on instinct will quickly be pricing trips below actual cost. At the same time, market rates are under pressure due to excess capacity on certain corridors. That is a dangerous combination: higher costs, but less room to pass them on.
What does this mean for your operation?
The three pressure factors, staff shortages, Wtta administration and rising costs per kilometre, share a common root: information that is not structured and available at the moment a planner or manager needs to make a decision. Who holds which contract, under which staffing agency, with which certification. What a trip actually costs including the road user charge and staff costs. Whether the order data arriving via PDF and email matches what is in the TMS. All of these questions stall on manual work: retyping, searching, checking. And the people who need to do that work are already in short supply.
Where do you start when capacity is shrinking?
Start with the process that currently takes the most time and is most prone to error. For most logistics companies, that is order intake: documents arrive by email and PDF, and someone rekeys them into the TMS or a spreadsheet. That is where time is lost and errors arise that cause problems further down the line, at invoicing, at trip calculation and in reconciling actual costs. An AI Worker that reads those incoming documents, extracts the relevant data and prepares it for processing eliminates the rekeying step. The planner reviews and approves. That is not replacing people; it is creating capacity so that the people who are there can focus on work that requires judgement. The same principle applies to Wtta administration: when data on agency staff is structured and available, checking against the NAU register takes minutes rather than a manual search. You do not need to replace your core system to achieve this. A layer around it that handles the preparatory work is often sufficient to relieve the pressure.