Ha, ha, last month I was in the , what you call ‘the West’ and particularly in the Netherlands, and it was precisely there that I was surprised that there was so much freight traffic, and yes, because of a major port in that country, there is extra heavy road freight traffic there, with lots of foreign license plates from all over europe, despite there being good freight connections (the Betuwe line) by train, so it is not all as you wish.