India is building high-speed highways to transform freight movement and cut logistics costs. But for truck drivers, cheaper food, affordable repairs and familiar roadside businesses can matter more than speed limits.
India is spending billions of dollars to make freight move faster. Its strategy is straightforward: build modern expressways, reduce congestion, connect industrial centres and ports, and cut the cost of moving goods across one of the world's largest economies.
Yet an unexpected obstacle is emerging. Some truckers continue to favour older highways, where they can eat cheaply, repair a broken vehicle without paying premium prices and find familiar places to rest.
The problem exposes a fundamental weakness in infrastructure planning. A road can be engineered for high speeds and still fail to become the preferred route for the businesses and workers expected to use it.
India's planned expansion of its high-speed road network, announced in September 2025, was valued at approximately ₹11 trillion, or $125 billion at the time. The programme aims to add 17,000 kilometres of access-controlled roads, with a target of expanding the network fivefold over roughly a decade. The investment is intended to modernise freight transportation, improve connectivity and reduce logistics costs. <Cite refs={["turn336789search1","turn336789search11"]} />
But the economics of trucking are more complicated than the distance between two cities or the speed a vehicle can achieve on a new road.
For a truck driver, every journey is a calculation involving fuel, tolls, food, maintenance, rest and the deadlines imposed by customers. If an expressway saves time but increases other operating expenses, its advantages may be less compelling than planners expect.
That is where India's ambitious infrastructure strategy faces a practical test.
The economics behind choosing the slower road
Modern expressways are designed to eliminate many of the problems associated with conventional highways. Access controls, grade-separated junctions and dedicated carriageways reduce interruptions and allow traffic to move more consistently.
But these improvements do not automatically make a journey cheaper.
Toll charges can add a significant expense to a long-distance trip. Food and accommodation along controlled-access highways may cost more than at roadside businesses on older routes. A driver who needs a tyre repair or a mechanic may also have fewer convenient options, particularly where exits and service facilities are widely spaced.
Older highways often pass through towns and commercial settlements that have developed around freight traffic over decades. These roads provide access to inexpensive restaurants, informal repair shops, fuel stations and small businesses accustomed to serving truckers.
The network is not merely transportation infrastructure. It is also an ecosystem of services.
A 2025 report by ThePrint on India's expressway expansion described truckers' relationships with roadside eateries, including drivers receiving food on credit or relying on local contacts to find affordable mechanical assistance. The report also documented concerns about higher tolls and the effects of shifting traffic away from established highway businesses. <Cite refs={["turn336789search5"]} />
For a driver operating under tight financial constraints, these details are not peripheral conveniences. They can influence the profitability of the entire journey.
The important distinction is between travelling faster and operating more efficiently. A highway may improve the first without delivering the second for every vehicle or route.
Why the roadside economy matters
The traditional highway economy is built around repeated relationships between drivers and local businesses.
Truckers may return to the same restaurant because its food is affordable, the owner understands their schedules or they can obtain a meal without immediate payment. Mechanics may be willing to diagnose a problem before agreeing on the cost of a repair. Parking areas and informal rest stops may provide flexibility that formal facilities do not.
These relationships are particularly important to drivers who spend long periods away from home and work under pressure to deliver cargo on time.
Expressways change the geography of this economy. Because access is restricted to designated entry and exit points, a driver cannot simply pull off the road to visit a nearby town. Leaving the expressway may require additional distance, time and toll-related considerations, depending on the route and its charging arrangements.
As traffic migrates to newer corridors, some older roadside businesses lose customers. Restaurants, workshops, fuel stations and small traders that depended on passing freight traffic can experience declining revenues.
This creates a distributional question that infrastructure investment often overlooks: who benefits when a road changes the movement of economic activity?
Expressways can generate new commercial opportunities around interchanges, logistics parks and service centres. But those opportunities may not compensate every existing business, particularly when new facilities are located far from established communities or require capital that small operators cannot easily raise.
The transition therefore affects more than truck drivers. It can reshape the livelihoods of entire roadside communities.
The missing link: facilities designed for truckers
India's government recognises that highways need more than carriageways. Its road ministry has pursued a programme of wayside amenities intended to provide food, fuel, parking, toilets, medical assistance and rest facilities along major routes.
A government review published in December 2025 said more than 500 wayside-amenity sites had been awarded by November that year, although only 110 were operational at that point. The facilities are intended to include truck parking and dedicated services for truckers. <Cite refs={["turn336789search6"]} />
The gap between sites awarded and facilities operating illustrates a broader implementation challenge. Announcing a facility or awarding a development contract does not mean drivers can already use it.
Even where amenities are available, their commercial model matters.
If a driver can buy a meal cheaply on an old highway but must pay substantially more at an expressway food court, the new facility may be less attractive. If parking is limited, repair services are unavailable or rest areas are poorly maintained, the road's theoretical efficiency may not translate into a better working experience.
Governments and operators must therefore consider affordability and service quality alongside construction.
A successful rest-stop strategy should include reasonably priced food, secure truck parking, clean toilets, showers where feasible, dependable fuel supplies, emergency assistance and access to mechanics. It should also offer enough capacity for heavy vehicles to stop without creating unsafe parking conditions.
These facilities must be positioned according to actual freight demand rather than simply distributed at convenient intervals on a planning map.
Faster roads cannot fix every logistics problem
There is another complication: road quality is only one component of freight efficiency.
A truck can travel quickly between cities and still spend hours waiting to load or unload goods at a factory, warehouse or distribution centre.
An analysis reported by Mint in May 2026 highlighted this problem in India. A government study found that loading and unloading delays were undermining the benefits of improved highways. The report put average commercial-vehicle speeds at roughly 37–38 kilometres per hour on highways and 47–48 kilometres per hour on expressways, while noting that delays at industrial facilities could consume substantial amounts of time. <Cite refs={["turn336789search0","turn336789search14"]} />
These figures illustrate why highway performance cannot be judged solely by the speed at which vehicles move between interchanges.
Freight efficiency depends on the entire journey, including the time spent collecting cargo, waiting for loading bays, travelling, resting, clearing checkpoints where applicable and delivering goods.
A modern expressway can reduce travel time, but it cannot independently resolve poorly coordinated warehouse schedules or slow cargo handling.
Nor should faster driving automatically be treated as the answer. Higher speeds can increase fuel consumption and operating costs, depending on vehicle type, load and conditions. A transporter may have little incentive to pay additional tolls if the customer does not offer a delivery premium or if the saved time cannot be converted into another productive trip.
The economic benefits of a new road depend on how the wider logistics system uses it.
The toll-road dilemma
Tolls are central to the expressway business model. They help fund construction, maintenance or private investment, depending on the financing structure.
But every toll also enters a transport operator's cost calculation.
Suppose a new route saves a truck several hours but costs substantially more in tolls. The operator must compare the value of the time saved with the additional charges, fuel expenditure and other costs. The result will vary according to the cargo, delivery deadline, vehicle utilisation and route.
For time-sensitive goods, such as certain perishable products, a faster route may justify the additional expense. For lower-margin cargo with flexible delivery schedules, a cheaper conventional highway may remain commercially preferable.
This is not necessarily a rejection of modern infrastructure. It is evidence that different types of freight have different economic requirements.
If policymakers expect all truckers to choose expressways simply because they are newer and faster, they risk confusing engineering performance with commercial attractiveness.
The more useful question is whether the expressway provides a measurable net benefit to the operator and the wider supply chain.
What India needs to measure
India's investment should be evaluated through the performance of its freight system, not just the kilometres of new road completed.
Several indicators deserve attention.
Total door-to-door delivery time: Measuring the journey from warehouse departure to final delivery would capture delays that highway speed statistics miss.
The full cost per shipment: This should include tolls, fuel, maintenance, driver expenses, waiting time and the cost of delays.
Expressway utilisation by freight vehicles: Traffic data should distinguish heavy commercial vehicles from private cars and examine which categories of cargo use the corridors.
Availability and affordability of trucker services: Rest areas should be assessed for operational status, secure parking, food prices, toilets, repair services and emergency support.
Loading and unloading times: Warehouses and factories should be encouraged to improve scheduling, cargo handling and turnaround times.
Effects on roadside communities: Policymakers should monitor whether small businesses lose their customer base and whether new commercial opportunities are accessible to local operators.
These measures would provide a clearer picture of whether the infrastructure investment is delivering the intended economic returns.
Lessons for developing economies, including Nigeria
India's experience has wider relevance for countries investing in transport corridors to support manufacturing, trade and regional integration.
Nigeria, for example, faces its own challenge of improving the movement of goods across long distances while reducing logistics costs. Better highways can improve connectivity, but their success also depends on secure parking, reliable repairs, affordable food, fuel access, road safety and efficient connections to warehouses, markets and ports.
A road designed around the needs of private motorists may not automatically serve the needs of commercial freight operators.
Similarly, building a highway without considering the businesses that currently support truckers can shift economic activity away from established communities without ensuring that the new corridor offers a practical replacement.
The lesson is not to avoid modern highways. It is to plan them as complete economic systems.
That means involving transport operators, drivers, local businesses, logistics companies and communities before deciding where facilities should be placed and how they should operate.
It also means recognising that informal roadside businesses may provide services that formal infrastructure has not yet managed to deliver at comparable prices.
Governments can encourage better standards without assuming that every existing service must disappear. Small businesses could be helped to operate in designated service areas, enter partnerships with larger operators or improve safety and hygiene while retaining their competitive pricing.
The objective should be to improve the freight experience rather than simply move traffic from one road to another.
The real test of India's expressway strategy
India's expressway expansion reflects a legitimate economic ambition: reduce transport friction, connect markets and make the movement of goods more predictable.
But infrastructure becomes productive only when people and businesses can use it in ways that make economic sense.
Truckers choosing older roads are highlighting a mismatch between the priorities of road design and the everyday realities of freight transportation. Travel time matters, but so do tolls, food, rest, repairs and the ability to keep a truck operating profitably.
If new highways fail to provide affordable services and if delays at warehouses continue to erode the value of faster journeys, some of the expected benefits may remain unrealised.
The answer is not to abandon expressways or assume that every driver should prefer the old road. It is to close the gap between infrastructure construction and the practical needs of the transport economy.
India's $130 billion bet will ultimately be judged not by how impressive its highways look, but by whether goods reach their destinations more reliably, businesses spend less moving them and the people who drive the trucks can make a sustainable living.
A faster road is only one part of an efficient freight system. The real achievement is making the entire journey faster, safer and economically worthwhile.
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