If you thought calls for heavy towing had gone a little quiet recently, then latest figures about the amount of goods moved by road will come as no surprise to you.

There has been far less need for heavy recovery call outs, because goods volume was some 40% down last year. Figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), showed that the amount of goods transported by road in 2009 fell to 148 million tonnes from a record 240 million tonnes in 2008. Activity in terms of tonne-kilometres also decreased sharply by 30% from just over 17million in 2008 to a little over 12 million in 2009.