For the majority of EU member countries, but especially those of the South i.e., Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, the last decade was characterised by a period of negative economic growth and general instability of their economies. During that period, the four countries faced significant changes to the output of several economic sectors, a development that has affected freight transportation in many ways. This paper examines the impacts that this economic environment had on road freight transport output. It aims to, first, analyse the trends and variations of several freight transport indicators and compare them to economic indicators that express the state of the economy in each of the four countries. Secondly, to create mathematical relations between these freight transport and economic indicators by analysing a number of panel data gathered over a period of 15 years from 2005 to 2019. Our results indicated that the “traditional”, relationship between the GDP and road freight transport performance for national and international operations seems to hold for Greece, Spain, and Portugal with positive elasticities but negative in the case of Italy (an anomaly that may indicate the start of decoupling or other deeper economic and social reasons). Further analysis revealed correlations with the index of production in the manufacturing sector, indicating the countries' low sensitivity to changes of the economic sector. This is also valid for the relationship with the countries' exporting activity, revealing the differences between the four countries in their export trade, i.e., different degrees of commodification, types of exported goods, or on trading with particular destination partners.

对于大多数欧盟成员国，尤其是希腊、意大利、西班牙和葡萄牙等南方成员国而言，过去十年的特点是经济负增长和经济普遍不稳定。在此期间，这四个国家的几个经济部门的产出都面临着重大变化，这一发展在许多方面影响了货运。本文研究了这种经济环境对公路货运输出的影响。它的目的是，首先，分析几个货运指标的趋势和变化，并将它们与表达四个国家经济状况的经济指标进行比较。其次，通过分析从 2005 年到 2019 年的 15 年期间收集的大量面板数据，在这些货物运输和经济指标之间建立数学关系。希腊、西班牙和葡萄牙的国际业务似乎具有正弹性，但在意大利的情况下为负（这种异常现象可能表明脱钩或其他更深层次的经济和社会原因的开始）。进一步分析显示，与制造业生产指数存在相关性，表明各国对经济部门变化的敏感性较低。这也适用于与各国出口活动的关系，