YINCHUAN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on Thursday launched its first cross-border e-commerce freight truck service to Europe.

Two trucks loaded with 4,000 pieces of cross-border e-commerce commodities departed from the regional capital of Yinchuan and will make an outbound TIR transport trip through the Alataw Pass, a major land port in Xinjiang.

TIR stands for Transport Internationaux Routiers or International Road Transport, which is an international customs transit system to help save time and money for transport operators and customs authorities when moving goods across borders.

The trucks are scheduled to arrive in Belgium in 14 days, traveling 12,000 km via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, before the distribution of the goods to other European countries.

Five regular departures will be made each day in the beginning, and there will be ten more, starting from April 2021.