Last-mile delivery costs are rising faster than customer expectations

Delivery costs are rising almost everywhere

The report Eye on the Last Mile EMEA 2026 draws on responses from more than 500 shippers and logistics companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The research analysed more than 4,000 data points gathered through 32 questions.

The clearest finding concerns delivery costs. 96% of respondents say the cost of an individual delivery increased compared with the previous year. The typical increase was 9%.

The bigger concern, however, is how costs compare with revenue. 76% of companies report that their expenses are growing at least as quickly as revenue. Among businesses operating their own fleets, 60% say costs are increasing faster than revenue. That figure falls to 26% among companies that outsource all deliveries.

The report also shows that the final delivery bill includes far more than fuel and route planning. Failed delivery attempts, operational exceptions and customer service queries all add to the total.

Outsourcing does not solve every problem

Some 36% of shippers plan to increase the share of deliveries handled by external partners. The research suggests that operational flexibility, rather than cost reduction alone, is the main reason. But greater reliance on external carriers also increases dependence on the information they provide.

Among companies that outsource all their delivery operations, 51% describe unreliable carrier information as their biggest challenge. By comparison, 22% identify cost as the main problem.

This highlights a central issue in last-mile logistics: it is not enough to know the cost of transport. Companies also need to know what is happening to each shipment and whether the data supplied by their partners is accurate and up to date.

Customers do not always want the fastest option

The report reveals a clear gap between the services companies offer and the features they believe matter most to customers. Reliability is the leading priority for 63% of respondents, while only 11% select speed. Even so, 43% of companies offer same-day or express delivery, and just 27% show an expected delivery date before the customer completes a purchase.

That may suggest some businesses are still investing in shorter delivery times even though customers are more concerned with certainty. For many shoppers, knowing when a parcel will arrive matters more than receiving it as quickly as possible.

AI adoption is growing, but large-scale use remains limited

Some 69% of surveyed companies are either implementing AI or already using it in delivery operations. However, only 18% have deployed AI solutions at scale.

The report identifies skills, data quality and systems integration as greater obstacles than funding alone. Companies are using AI for demand forecasting, customer service, delivery-time predictions and route optimisation.

That finding reinforces one of the report’s broader conclusions: technology cannot solve the problem if data is inconsistent or arrives too late.

The last mile is becoming harder to cost accurately

One of the report’s most important insights concerns the structure of delivery costs rather than their overall level. In last-mile operations, a growing share of spending arises outside the transport leg itself: failed deliveries, operational changes, customer contacts and problems with information flows all contribute to the final bill.

As a result, a carrier’s quoted rate provides an increasingly incomplete picture of the true cost of completing a delivery. For shippers and logistics operators, the key question is no longer only the cost per mile or the price of an individual order. They also need to measure the cost of managing the entire process through to a successful handover.

That is the core challenge facing last-mile operations: prices are rising, but so is the number of points at which an otherwise routine delivery can generate an additional cost.