What does it take for haulage companies to say yes to electrification?

This article is a summary of results from the studies "Decision factors and trade-offs in BET adoption: insights from Swedish forestry freight haulers" (Shenoy et al)., "Electrifying Heavy Transport: Haulage Owners’ Evaluative Dimensions and the Conditions for Workability" (Fridner et al.) and "Hur resonerar åkerier kring ellastbilar?" (Bygge et al.) For more information on the TREE project, visit: TREE project page

The electrification of heavy trucks is central to the sustainability ambitions of both the forestry and transport sectors. This transition will largely be determined by the haulage companies that must invest in the vehicles. Their day-to-day operations must still function under new conditions regarding charging, employed capital, and the work environment. In three separate studies, the TREE project has focused specifically on the perspective of haulage companies: what conditions need to be satisfied and what are the current obstacles to the transition?

The studies show which critical pieces of the puzzle need to be in place for electrification to be seen as a reasonable choice for a company's business operation: productivity must be maintained, charging must be integrated into the working day, and there must be commercial buy-in from customers. The results suggest that haulage companies are not necessarily sceptical about electrification. On the contrary, there is clear curiosity and positive experiences among those that have tested electric trucks. At the same time, haulage companies are pragmatic: the big question is not the technology itself, but how it affects day-to-day operations.

Three perspectives on the same transition

Study 1 (Bygge et al., 2025) is based on interviews with decision-makers in timber and woodchip haulage companies, as well as with drivers already operating electric trucks in forestry operations. It shows how haulage companies assess electric operation in their own day-to-day work, where technology, planning, investment, and the work environment must come together at the same time. A central finding is that positive experiences of the driving itself can coexist with considerable doubt about whether electric operations can be made to work in the company's business operation. The study also shows that more predictable logistical flows, such as chip trucks between industries, are more clearly seen as possible first steps than roundwood transports.

Study 2 (Shenoy et al., 2026) takes a systems perspective. It shows that decisions about electric operation cannot be understood by looking at cost, charging or technology in isolation. Instead, charging availability, battery size, payload, productivity and profitability influence one another in a larger system of trade-offs. Electrification therefore emerges as a systems challenge rather than a series of separate problems. One interesting point is that the study highlights driver anxiety related to charging and operational stress as an important factor in the transition – something that has rarely been emphasized before. 

Study 3 (Fridner et al., 2026) focuses on how haulage company owners assess the possibility of electrification in practice. It shows that owners' reasoning is broad and multidimensional, revolving around no fewer than eight recurring dimensions: economy, charging, flows, technology, drivers, service (including safety issues), sustainability, and policy. Economy and charging clearly weigh most heavily in owners' reasoning, while sustainability and policy play much smaller roles. The study also shows that, in practice, electrification is tested in two intertwined ways: whether everyday productivity can be preserved, and whether the investment can be made commercially viable together with the customer.

Individually, the studies illuminate different parts of the same transition, but together, they provide a more comprehensive picture. The first shows the issues in day-to-day operations. The second demonstrates how different factors connect and reinforce or retard each other over time. The third shows what owners consider when deciding whether electric operation can be made to work in their business operation. Overall, the picture shifts the focus from the binary question of whether haulage companies are positive or negative to what needs to be in place for them to say yes. 

What matters in practice

What all three studies have in common is that electrification is not assessed as an isolated technology issue. The key question is whether the business can still be run in a reasonable way. Three conditions recur:

• Productivity must be maintained. For haulage companies, productivity is not an abstract efficiency metric but a question of how much transport work can be completed during a shift: loads per day, waiting times, cycle times, queues, detours, and the ability to deal with disruptions when the day does not go according to plan. Diesel still sets the benchmark for what is considered sufficient productivity, and electrification needs to come close enough to be viable in a business with narrow margins. This is why more predictable flows with suitable stops are generally seen as the most appropriate first steps for electrification.
• Charging must fit the rhythm of the working day. What matters is not only that charging is available, but that it can take place without eating into the working day – by being incorporated in natural stops, by being fast enough, or by being located where it disrupts shifts as little as possible. This links directly to the point above, because charging that requires extra stops, detours or queues quickly becomes a productivity problem and affects the work environment. More tightly controlled planning can be experienced as a burden, and uncertain access to charging can create anxiety among drivers and increase operational stress. At the same time, electrification is primarily described as something that can improve the work environment. Overall, the three studies point in the same direction: charging must function as part of the job rather than be an extra task outside it.
• The customer must be willing to make the business case work. Even a technically functioning set-up is not enough if the business case is too fragile. Purchase price, residual value, electricity price, service, waiting times, and any loss of payload must be manageable in companies with tight margins. This is where the transport buyer becomes central. It is not just about willingness to pay, but about how contracts are designed, how risk is distributed, how long-term the relationships are, and who bears the cost when productivity, charging and payload change. It is not enough to demand fossil-free transport on roughly the same terms as before; the customer needs to actively help make it investable, for example by supporting long-term and deep business relationships with haulage companies.

Taken together, the three studies paint a picture in which electrification is attracting curiosity among haulage companies but is simultaneously weighed against an already pressured day-to-day reality with little room for mistakes and additional risk. What determines the outcome is less the technology itself than how well the overall set-up works in practice. This makes electrification a shared transition challenge rather than something that haulage companies can shoulder on their own.