The Antwerp Court confirmed in August 2025 the collapse of five companies tied to the Belgian De Wolf Group, which operated through a holding company, Group 5216, and four subsidiaries: Red Line Service, Transport De Wolf & Berre, Red Line Logistic Service and Transport Bellekens, the latter acquired in 2021. It was precisely this acquisition that proved to be the weak point of the entire industrial venture.
Born as a traditional full-truckload operator, the Group attempted from 2020 to diversify into part-loads, express services and integrated logistics. The new strategy, led by shareholders Didier and Pascal Potters, Jef and Fons De Wolf and Luc De Koninck, aimed to strengthen competitiveness in an already saturated market. But modernisation was not enough to offset the losses inherited from Bellekens, which was already in deep crisis at the time of acquisition, posting a deficit of half a million euros in 2022 and a further 135,000 euros in 2023.
A rescue attempt emerged in April 2025, when the Antwerp Court approved a restructuring plan presented by the Group. But the real situation turned out to be far worse, and in August the same judicial authority declared bankruptcy, citing a verified state of insolvency and the absence of any prospect of recovery. The procedure was entrusted to administrators Geert Naulaerts, Kristof Benijts and Philip Somers, tasked with seeking buyers to prevent the total loss of jobs. However, the complexity of the corporate structure and the scale of the debts reduce the chances of a complete rescue, leaving the piecemeal sale of activities as the most likely solution.
The De Wolf case is not an isolated one. According to the Belgian Institute of Road Transport and Logistics (ITLB), 2024 recorded 724 bankruptcy proceedings in the sector, an increase of 11.7 per cent compared with the previous year. In the third quarter alone, sixty-eight transport companies closed, the highest figure since the 2008 crisis. The reasons are manifold: the rising price of diesel, which went from 1,545 to 1,621 euros per thousand litres between the end of 2024 and the start of 2025, the obligation to cover part of emissions with carbon credits, and the fall in transport capacity, down 5 per cent in January 2025 compared with the previous year. This mix eroded company margins, already under strain from increasingly aggressive international competition.
The crisis, however, is not confined to Belgium. In Germany, freight transport company bankruptcies rose from 71 in the first quarter of 2025 to 100 in the second. In France, closures increased by 37.8 per cent, while in Britain the Road Haulage Association reported nearly 500 bankruptcies in 2023, double the number of two years earlier. Emblematic cases such as Truswell Haulage, which had been operating since 1940 and collapsed leaving 86 employees jobless, show the European scale of the problem. In Poland, meanwhile, the number of corporate restructuring proceedings in 2024 was the highest in recent years, a sign of widespread malaise.
Analysts foresee a wave of consolidation, with stronger companies poised to acquire the assets of those that have failed, strengthening their positions at the expense of competition. But the structural problem of driver shortages remains unresolved, exacerbated by the fact that many workers leave the sector after the closure of their company. The Belgian Government has introduced measures to make reorganisation procedures more flexible, while at European level discussions are under way on how to curb low-cost competition from the East. But implementation times risk being lengthy.
