Abstract
What hinders the analysis of road freight transport is the fact that direct observations of the handling factor are lacking. The handling factor is the frequency of tonne transportation in the origin to destination supply chain. It pertains also to the number of times that the same tonnage is reported to Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Changes in the tonne transported figure may derive from changes in the actual tonnage transported or handling factor changes, in unknown proportions. There is an econometric technique that can be used to estimate what could not be observed and thus to recover the hidden variables of both the handling factor and the transported tonne factor. (A)