The Impact of Last-Mile Logistics: a Case Study on the Optimisation of Commercial Fleets through the European Union

Abstract

Over the last decade, many cities in the world have been facing the impact of urban population growth and rapid e-commerce spread on freight volumes and consequently on the number of road freight vehicles. These dynamics have fostered the central role of last-mile logistics. The transport sector is responsible for around 25% of total GHG global emissions, 30% of which are related to freight road transport. Urban freight transportation has remarkable implications in terms of air pollution, noise, and road security. In this context, the electrification of urban fleets could represent a viable and efficient solution to mitigate the environmental footprint of last-mile logistics. Furthermore, last-mile logistics also involves high organization costs and time inefficiencies for transportation firms and customers. The technological development of routing processes through a new optimized IT system (e.g., by means of digital twins) may play a key role in “greening” the last-mile logistic sector. In this research, we consider a case study of investments in Electric Vehicles, aiming at assessing their environmental and monetary costs and benefits, and the scalability of such a policy.