Project, request for a demonstration, or free trial?

Why your cost per parcel is rising even though your volumes haven’t changed

14/10/2026
10:25

Reading time: 5 min

Cost per parcel is what you spend to deliver one unit, labour and vehicle included. Over the past two years, one single component has driven most of the increase: fuel.

In practice: a fleet of 25 vehicles spends €152,348 a year on diesel, €38,087 of it on kilometres that serve no parcel at all. That is €1,523 per vehicle. This is exactly where Nomadia Delivery and Nomadia TourSolver come in.

What your cost per parcel doesn't show

A cost per parcel is an aggregate. It does not separate the kilometres that delivered something from those that delivered nothing.

The basic calculation fits in three lines. Twenty-five vans each driving 30,000 kilometres a year at 9 litres per 100 km: 750,000 kilometres, 67,500 litres, €152,348 at French diesel prices in early September 2026. Around €6,100 per vehicle.

Divided by the number of parcels delivered, this amount becomes directly comparable with labour costs. And that comparison has tipped: fuel now weighs heavily enough to decide whether a route is profitable.

A structural issue, not a driver problem

The usual reflex is to look for the lever on the ground: eco-driving training, fuel consumption tracking per vehicle, bonuses per litre saved. These measures account for a few per cent.

Wasted kilometres, on the other hand, are decided before departure. They are built into the route plan, not into the way it is driven. A driver cannot make up for a poorly designed route.

Why the gap is structural

The same gap comes back every day, and it is no scheduling accident. A route that is rolled over from one week to the next repeats the previous week's choices, including those that were already no longer the right ones.

Manual planning handles constraints one after another: first the promised time slots, then vehicle capacity, then geography. Every upstream decision constrains the ones that follow. An optimisation engine assesses them all together.

5 sources of wasted kilometres on a delivery route

Partial loads. A vehicle leaving at 60% capacity drives the same route as a full one, for fewer parcels delivered.
Duplicate trips. Pickups in the morning, deliveries in the afternoon: the same area is covered twice when both flows could have been handled in a single pass.
Empty runs. Between the end of one job and the start of the next, the vehicle drives without carrying anything. This trip does not appear in any cost per parcel.
Failed deliveries. An absent recipient means a route to run again. The kilometres are paid for twice for a single parcel.
Time slots promised without checking their cost. A time window accepted when the order is placed can force a vehicle to cross the area at the wrong moment.

A driver can do nothing about any of these five items. They are decided upstream, when the plan is drawn up.

And the result can be verified: distance driven is a measured figure, not an estimate. The gap between the optimised plan and the previous one shows up in the fleet's records.

“In the last mile, almost every cost-cutting lever requires investment. Cutting kilometres is the only one that delivers results without committing a single euro of capital.”

Jérémy Mandon, Sales Director, Nomadia

What you can do without waiting for the next contract

The price per parcel is often fixed for a year or more, sometimes indexed to a benchmark that does not keep pace with the pump. Waiting for the next cycle to pass on the increase means absorbing several quarters of extra cost. Acting on mileage has an immediate effect, on the current contract.

Behind these figures is a European provider of field mobility software, present in 92 countries and used by more than 200,000 professionals. Nomadia has been designing optimisation engines for over twenty years.

Calculate your real fuel cost

Enter the number of vehicles, their annual mileage and their fuel consumption. The simulator shows your fuel budget, your budget after optimisation and the gap between the two.

Go to the simulator →

Have your routes analysed

A Nomadia expert reviews your estimate with your actual routes, constraints and volumes, and tells you what is achievable for your business.

Contact us →

Frequently asked questions

What share of a delivery's cost is fuel?

It varies with route density and vehicle type, but it has risen sharply over the past two years. For a fleet of 25 vans driving 750,000 kilometres a year, fuel amounts to €152,348 annually at French diesel prices in September 2026, or around €6,100 per vehicle.

How can you cut a fleet's fuel costs without changing vehicles?

By reducing the number of kilometres driven. Five levers affect this total: load factor, combining pickups and deliveries, eliminating empty runs, reducing failed deliveries and choosing which time slots to offer. All of them come down to planning.

What is the 25% reduction in mileage based on?

It is an order of magnitude, not a guarantee. It assumes that current planning has room for improvement: fixed territories, routes rolled over week after week, time slots accepted without trade-offs. A fleet that is already finely planned will gain less. The simulator lets you adjust this percentage to test several scenarios.

Is renewing the fleet more effective than optimising routes?

The two levers do not act in the same place. A more fuel-efficient vehicle reduces litres per 100 kilometres, for an investment of several hundred thousand euros and a lead time of several months. Optimisation reduces the number of kilometres, with no capital and no delay, from the very first replanned route.

Why is diesel rising faster than petrol?

Because the pressure is on refining capacity, not on crude oil. The gap between the two fuels is widening across Europe even though they come from the same barrel. European gasoil stocks are expected to hit their lowest level since 2015 in November.