We are now entering the Summer holiday period and face service disruption due to HGV driving bans and closures in Italy & France.

We shall endeavour to maintain agreed transit times wherever possible however some delays are inevitable.

Driving bans

From w/c 27th June 2022 to w/c 22nd August 2022 there are HGV driving bans in Italy during each Saturday (usually they are limited to Sunday), with additional driving bans on Friday 22nd July, Friday 29th July, Friday 5th August and Friday 12th August.

In France there are also driving bans each Saturday, from 16^th July to 20^th August inclusive. There is also a driving ban on Thursday 14th July (Bastille Day).

Italian service interruption

Last scheduled Italian groupage departures before holidays:
UK to IT                Tuesday 2^nd August 2022
IT to UK                Tuesday 2^nd August 2022

First scheduled Italian groupage departures after holidays:

UK to IT                Friday 19^th August 2022
IT to UK                Wednesday 24th August 2022

Viamaster will continue to operate ad-hoc services to/from Italy throughout August at a reduced capacity and with possible extended transit times.

During this holiday period the availability of equipment will be severely reduced due to the imbalance of export & import cargo and the limited amount of overseas equipment in the market, also the Italian domestic transport providers have limited capabilities throughout the majority of August with national services suspended for a number of weeks. As in previous years, additional freight costs for high volume shipments & full load traffic may be incurred.

If you have any particular concerns then please direct your enquiries to your usual operational contact.