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 1st July 2023 to w/c 27th August 2023 there are HGV driving bans in Italy during each Saturday (usually they are limited to Sunday), with additional driving bans on Friday 21st July, Friday 28th July, Friday 4th August and Friday 11th August.

There is also a driving ban in France on Friday 14th July (Bastille Day).

Italian service interruption

Last scheduled Italian groupage departures before holidays:
UK to IT                Friday 4th August 2023
IT to UK               Tuesday 1st August 2023

First scheduled Italian groupage departures after holidays:

UK to IT                Friday 18th August 2023
IT to UK                Wednesday 23rd August 2023

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.