by Walther Ploos van Amstel
PostNL’s first-quarter 2026 figures are a wake-up call for everyone in e-commerce. Parcel volumes fell 7.1%. This is the new reality. The party is over. The years of double-digit e-commerce growth are behind us for the most part — yet the sector is still deep in denial. Five years have passed since the Covid boom …
While Dutch cities spent the past year fine-tuning zero-emission zones and exemption regimes, London opened a different front. In March, the GLA and Transport for London published a progress update on the London Logistics Plan, due in late 2026 — the city’s first attempt in years to treat logistics not as a nuisance to be …
Here are some of the most notable international city logistics items from recent weeks and months: UPS restructures its UK last mile. UPS wants to reduce its UK workforce by transferring last-mile delivery to outside couriers, which would significantly change the labor landscape for legacy parcel carriers; arguably the clearest sign yet that the integrator …
Speed is the holy grail of food delivery. Platforms like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat push hard on short delivery times, with real consequences for riders: time pressure in dense urban traffic, and elevated exposure to crashes and near-misses. New research from TU Delft (Kavta, Sharif Azadeh and de Almeida Correia, published in Transport …
Fifteen months after New York City introduced congestion pricing, commercial fleets have clearly adapted. New telematics data from Altitude by Geotab, based on more than 50,000 commercial vehicle trips, shows that operators have responded not by avoiding Manhattan, but by using their vehicles more efficiently. The most striking finding is a 15% increase in operational …
Urban freight is competing for an increasingly scarce resource: curb space. The growth of e-commerce, grocery deliveries, on-demand services and ride-hailing has intensified pressure on city streets, while many cities continue to redesign public space primarily for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. The result is a growing mismatch between freight demand and curb availability, leading …
Shippers hold the steering wheel in the transition to electric trucks. The problem of misaligned incentives: who pays for the transition? Transport companies do not determine the pace of electrification. Shippers do. That may sound counterintuitive, but it reflects one of the biggest structural challenges facing the road freight sector. While carriers invest hundreds of …
Electric trucks are steadily moving from pilot projects to mainstream city logistics. A new report by C40 Cities, the University of Exeter, Arup and Laneshift argues that cities can accelerate this transition by combining regulation, charging infrastructure and long-term policy certainty. Their central message is compelling: electrification reaches a “tipping point” only when three conditions …
The Laneshift program, a joint initiative by C40 Cities and The Climate Pledge, has spent three years proving the business case for electric freight trucks in India, Brazil, and Mexico. The 2025 Impact Report presents the results. For transport managers watching the global transition, the numbers are worth knowing. What was deployed 357 electric freight …
The Dutch Clean Air Agreement is outperforming expectations. That deserves recognition — municipalities have worked hard on this for years. But those responsible for air quality policy know that the next challenge is already visible and more complex. RIVM is clear: under the current adopted policy, the stricter 2030 European standards will not be met …