Real-time data from border-queue tracker KolejkaNaGranicy shows that, as of the evening of 17 September, drivers entering Poland at the Koroszczyn–Kozlovichi crossing faced an extraordinary 37 hours’ wait, the longest recorded this quarter. Exit queues at Terespol–Brest also stretched beyond two hours. The delays follow a week of stepped-up Polish customs inspections of east-bound consignments amid concerns about sanctioned goods and bio-security. Koroszczyn handles the lion’s share of EU-bound road freight from Belarus, servicing automotive components, agri-food and e-commerce parcels on the so-called Brest corridor. With close to 2,500 trucks a day in peak season, even incremental slow-downs quickly snowball. Forwarders report missed ferry slots in Gdańsk and elevated demurrage costs at Warsaw warehouses. Several factors compound the bottleneck: an acute shortfall of Polish Border Guard officers due to redeployment on the Ukrainian frontier; IT outages in the National Customs Service’s declaration system; and driver protests over new cabotage rules that restrict Belarusian hauliers’ onward operations inside the EU. For supply-chain managers the advice is threefold. First, divert time-critical cargo via alternative crossings such as Bobrowniki or Lithuania’s Šalčininkai where waits remained below two hours on Thursday. Second, build at least 48 hours’ slack into just-in-time deliveries bound for central-Polish plants. Third, brief non-EU drivers on Schengen visa validity: over-stays detected at the checkpoint can result in entry bans and vehicle impoundment. Poland’s Infrastructure Ministry says a new fast-lane for perishable goods will open at Koroszczyn in November, but hauliers are sceptical. Until then, high queue volatility will remain a critical planning variable for any company that relies on this eastern gateway.
