City halls love to talk about parcels. The white delivery van has become the poster child of urban freight policy: hubs for e-commerce, regulation for e-commerce, working groups on e-commerce. Research from José Holguín-Veras and colleagues (City Logistics 2025, Boston) suggests we may be aiming at the wrong target.
The researchers compared business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) freight traffic across Boston’s ZIP codes, combining Amazon last-mile delivery data with econometric models of shipments and deliveries.
The finding is uncomfortable for the e-commerce-obsessed: in the dense urban core, B2B traffic dominates. Parcels win in the suburbs; in downtown, it is the endless stream of small deliveries to shops, restaurants, offices and hotels that fills the streets.
The mechanism is logistics, not volume. A handful of large parcel carriers consolidate ruthlessly: one van, dozens of stops, 1.5 packages per stop, tight routes. B2B is the opposite: hundreds or thousands of small carriers and suppliers, each making their own trip, with little ability to bundle. More orders do not mean more vans. Fewer carriers means fewer trips. That is the arithmetic our policy debate keeps forgetting.
Why then the fixation on e-commerce? Because parcel carriers are visible, professional and easy to engage. They have government relations departments and issue press releases. The plumber, the drinks wholesaler and the fish supplier do not. Policymakers collaborate with whoever answers the phone; not with whoever generates the traffic.
The lesson for cities rolling out zero-emission zones and hub strategies: look beyond the parcel van. Make freight policy granular; per street, per district, not per city. And invest in the hard, unglamorous work of reaching thousands of small B2B carriers and their customers. That is where the real congestion, emissions, and parking pressure sit.
Not sexier. Just more effective.
Walther Ploos van Amstel.
Also read: City logistics is a neighborhood issue, not a city issue