The Lithuanian road haulage giant Girteka announced in August 2026 the expansion of its European network with two sites in Riga, Latvia, and Oradea, Romania, as part of a review of its operating model prompted by the shortage of drivers. At the same time, it has opened a new function on its digital portal to third-party carriers working for the company, dedicated to tenders for regular transport.
Expansion in Latvia is already well advanced, with around 100 industrial vehicles registered and drivers hired locally, while in Romania Girteka is receiving its first trucks and recruiting drivers. The programme provides for locally registered fleets, direct employment of drivers and transport management, with administrative staff set to increase in line with operational needs. The expansion follows the model adopted in Poland, where the Lithuanian road haulier already operates a fleet of more than 3,000 industrial vehicles, with local driver recruitment and dedicated transport management structures. "This step is necessary to ensure the continuity and efficiency of our transport operations. The availability of professional drivers remains a key constraint and we need greater flexibility to recruit at the scale required by our fleet. Starting operations in Latvia and Romania gives us additional options to attract and hire drivers, organise the fleet more effectively and maintain the capacity our customers rely on," explains Mindaugas Paulauskas, chief executive of Girteka Transport.
For Girteka, which carries most of the 800,000 full truckloads it handles each year for more than 5,000 customers across Europe, the driver shortage is the main issue, against a backdrop of more than 500,000 unfilled positions across European road haulage as a whole, according to estimates by IRU (International Road Transport Union). The organisation also estimates that around 20% of current European drivers will retire over the next five years, adding further pressure to an already strained labour market.
Girteka announced another development during the summer, concerning road hauliers operating as third-party carriers: the introduction on its Partners Portal of the Tenders function, which provides online access to tenders for regular transport on fixed routes and the management of related bids. Until now, the platform had mainly made spot loads available to carriers, with around 4,000 shipments published every week. "As we continue to develop our forwarding services, we remain committed to building long-term cooperation with small and medium-sized carriers. We know that one of the biggest challenges for transport companies is ensuring business predictability and the ability to plan fleet utilisation over the long term. That is why we created Tenders, a function that provides simple and transparent access to tenders for regular transport, allowing our partners to manage bids in one place and flexibly adapt the scope of cooperation to their operational capabilities," says Paweł Stecko, head of carrier development in Girteka’s brokerage division.
The new function covers the entire process, from publication of the tender to bid management and communication of the final award decision. Carriers receive automatic notifications of newly published tenders and can view information on routes, contract duration, operational requirements and the type of trailer required, as well as a route map, estimated distance and expected transit times. They can filter tenders by route, dates, status or reference number, and indicate the transport volume the company is able to guarantee. "One of the key aspects of Tenders is the ability to declare available transport capacity flexibly. Until now, selecting partners for regular operations required significant involvement from both sides and was based, among other things, on communication by email. Now the entire process takes place in one place and carriers can track the status of their bids in real time, which increases the transparency of cooperation and speeds up decisions," Stecko stresses.
The introduction of the Tenders function adds to the opportunities already available on the Partners Portal, which nevertheless remains mainly based on spot loads. The published tenders concern projects carried out by Girteka in European transport: depending on the scale of the project, part of the activity is handled with the company’s own fleet, while the remaining volume is made available to carrier partners through the platform. Registration on the Partners Portal requires a verification procedure, after which carriers gain access to the platform’s full range of functions, including participation in tenders through Tenders. Girteka works mainly with carriers operating refrigerated and curtainsider semi-trailers, with a network covering Poland, Germany, the Benelux area, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain across 34 transport corridors, extended to Norway, Sweden and Finland for temperature-controlled transport.
