Last-Mile Logistics: Key Trends for 2025

In 2025, last-mile logistics companies must enhance their capabilities across multiple fronts to meet evolving client and consumer expectations. Which innovations in services, technologies, and delivery approaches should take priority appears to be a challenging upcoming year.

A Challenging Context

The transport and logistics industry faces numerous uncertainties—spanning political, economic, fiscal, social, institutional, and geopolitical dimensions—causing sector organizations to approach their 2025 forecasts with significant caution. Industry experts highlight several key concerns:

• While inflation appears to be stabilizing, this improvement alone won’t likely stimulate overall household consumption—a critical driver of the French economy. The combination of political volatility and worsening social conditions has created a cautious consumer mindset and eroded confidence, reflected in household savings rates climbing to 18% of gross income by late 2024 (Insee).
• The anticipated continuation of sluggish demand will create excess capacity in warehousing and freight transportation sectors, driving prices downward even as non-fuel expenses continue to rise (including wages, vehicle upkeep, insurance premiums, and toll fees). This squeeze will undermine company profitability and threaten long-term sustainability.Business failures are projected to rise, especially within road freight transportation, where bankruptcies increased by 37.8% from January through September 2024 compared to the s
• ame timeframe in 2023. Among the 1,339 recorded bankruptcies, 939 resulted in judicial liquidation, with small enterprises under 10 employees suffering the most severe impact (source: Altarès – Upply). Industry analysts worry that diminished repayment capabilities in 2025 will restrict businesses’ access to financing and compromise their investment capacity.

E-commerce Bucks the Trend of General Pessimism

Amid the otherwise bleak outlook, a single encouraging trend emerges that’s vital for the future operations and growth of last-mile logistics providers: e-commerce is booming!

Online sales of products and services reached €128 billion during the first three quarters of 2024, representing a 9.6% increase compared to the same period in 2023—substantially outperforming overall GDP growth (Fevad).

The third quarter heralded the return to double-digit growth rates and, more significantly, reinforced the recovery in product sales that began in Q1. Most notably, non-food product orders showed positive growth (+1%) for the first time after 10 consecutive declining quarters.

The impressive performance during Black Friday and Black Week 2024, with online transactions jumping 11% compared to 2023, suggests a robust fourth quarter and indicates a promising 2025 for companies managing the delivery and distribution of e-commerce orders throughout the year.

Nevertheless, these logistics providers must secure adequate resources—both personnel and technological—to fulfill these responsibilities according to client and consumer expectations while safeguarding their profit margins.

Making Optimization the Top Priority

In 2025, transportation companies must focus on securing revenue while rigorously controlling costs to safeguard their profit margins. Investing in technologies that optimize workforce management, vehicle fleets, utilization rates, and delivery routing will become essential to:

• Cushion the impact of sluggish demand on business operations
• Maintain competitive pricing in a declining market by calculating routes that minimize distance traveled and fuel consumption
• Enable strategic outsourcing during peak periods without increasing fixed costs
• Make data-driven decisions about fleet size and composition through enhanced analytics capabilities

Organizations implementing Nomadia’s route planning and optimization solutions typically achieve a 15% reduction in fleet mileage, fuel usage, and carbon emissions. Even if diesel prices continue their 2024 downward trend into 2025, these savings significantly enhance company resilience while improving environmental performance.

These same companies also realize productivity improvements of 20-30%—a crucial competitive edge during challenging economic conditions.

The Rise of Alternative Delivery Options

While home delivery remains popular among French consumers, it has been gradually declining across Europe in favor of alternative delivery methods, which now account for 46% of all e-commerce deliveries (Toluna Harris Interactive – Fevad, 2024).

• Pickup points dominate the alternative delivery landscape, representing nearly half (45%) of non-home deliveries. Their popularity stems from increasingly extensive networks that now reach rural and suburban areas. These options typically offer the most economical shipping choice for consumers when home delivery isn’t free. The convenience factor is significant—customers can select their preferred location and collect packages at their convenience, thanks to the extended operating hours of most pickup facilities.
• Automated lockers and click-and-collect services equally share the remaining portion of alternative deliveries. Locker systems are experiencing particularly rapid growth, offering even greater flexibility than traditional pickup points, especially outdoor installations that provide 24/7 accessibility.

All major parcel distribution companies (Mondial Relay, La Poste/PickUp, Amazon, Vinted, etc.) are heavily investing in automated locker infrastructure. However, with fewer than 30,000 lockers installed by late 2024, France lags significantly behind the UK’s network of over 300,000. As locker coverage expands, customer adoption increases, providing carriers with multiple advantages:

• Streamlined delivery routes through consolidated drop points
• Reduced vehicle requirements and road congestion
• Increased predictability with fixed delivery routes
• Optimized returns processing by collecting customer-returned items
• Elimination of time-sensitive delivery windows

These benefits collectively reduce operational costs and help maintain competitive pricing—a critical factor considering that 55% of online shoppers prioritize delivery cost over delivery speed (27%) (Toluna Harris Interactive – Fevad, 2024).

Expanding the Delivery Ecosystem

While alternative delivery locations continue to gain traction, they clearly aren’t suitable for all product categories—particularly bulky items like furniture, appliances, and bicycles. Regardless of delivery destination, today’s consumers increasingly expect a range of shipping options. Research by SendCloud across four European markets (France, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands) reveals significant regional variations in delivery preferences.

French consumers notably demonstrate a strong preference for next-day delivery—a logistically demanding service—and place high importance on selecting specific delivery dates and times, which complicates shipment planning and route optimization.

The proliferation of delivery options addresses genuine consumer demand, but only delivers value when promises are fulfilled. Meeting these complex challenges requires sophisticated technology—specifically, an advanced Delivery Management System (DMS).

With an urban logistics-focused DMS like Nomadia Delivery, businesses gain comprehensive capabilities to offer pre-optimized delivery windows, ensure timely order preparation, optimize routes by accounting for traffic conditions, access restrictions, and vehicle specifications, and provide complete package traceability from collection through final customer delivery.

Addressing Growing Environmental Concerns

Consumer awareness regarding the ecological impact of e-commerce deliveries continues to rise. According to SendCloud research, this environmental consciousness is particularly pronounced among French consumers, with 47% rating it as important or very important—notably higher than their European counterparts (Netherlands: 37%, Germany: 39%, UK: 44%).

A significant segment of French consumers (17%) express willingness to pay premium prices for environmentally-friendly delivery options—specifically those utilizing electric vehicles or, preferably, bicycles/cargo bikes (Toluna Harris Interactive – Fevad survey, 2024). The latter option, widely acknowledged as the most sustainable approach, is gaining momentum through the development of a robust cycle logistics industry with strong public sector support. Currently, 200 cycle logistics companies serve third-party clients across 74 French cities, with their operations strengthened by emerging next-generation infrastructure.

The Gobelins logistics hub in Paris, scheduled for completion in the first half of 2025, exemplifies this trend. Designed specifically for urban distribution and last-mile delivery, this facility will accommodate both traditional 44-ton trucks and cargo bikes for business and consumer deliveries. Such infrastructure developments are essential for expanding the ecosystem of shippers and carriers capable of offering sustainable urban delivery solutions to their customers.

The Omnipresent Role of AI

Discussions about key logistics trends invariably highlight artificial intelligence, which may raise questions about why we’ve addressed this topic only at the conclusion of this analysis. The explanation is straightforward: from our perspective as software developers, AI isn’t merely a trend—it has been fundamental to Nomadia’s service and software development for years, enabling transport and logistics companies to operate in ways that are socially responsible, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable.

If your organization aspires to successfully balance these three critical dimensions in 2025, we encourage you to engage with our experts now to explore the possibilities!