Direct answer. The last mile refers to the very final leg of the transport chain, between the last distribution hub or depot and the final recipient, whether an individual or a business. It is the most fragmented segment of the whole journey and, proportionally, the most expensive, due to the high number of stops for a small volume delivered at each point.
Why the last mile is expensive
On a long-haul route between two platforms, a single truck carries a consolidated volume to a handful of drop-off points: the cost per parcel stays low. The last mile reverses this logic: a vehicle must stop at many different addresses, each representing only one or a few parcels, with tight constraints on time slots, urban parking, and sometimes access (upper-floor delivery, no loading dock). This fragmentation explains why the last mile represents, according to industry studies, the heaviest share of total delivery cost, even though it covers only a fraction of the total distance traveled.
The term applies just as much to B2C — home delivery from e-commerce, the area where the subject is most documented — as to B2B, where it refers to final delivery to a business customer, a store or an industrial site, sometimes via a tail lift where no suitable dock is available. The levers for optimizing this segment are well known: consolidating deliveries into rounds, parcel lockers and pickup points to pool multiple recipients, route optimization via a TMS, and, more recently, experiments with autonomous urban delivery robots or vehicles, still marginal in France.
The last mile also concentrates most of the perceived customer experience: it is the only point in the journey where the recipient directly witnesses service quality, which explains the particular attention paid to meeting announced time slots and to smooth contact with the driver, far more than for the upstream transport segments, which are largely invisible to the end customer.
FAQ
Why is the last mile considered the most expensive segment?
Because it multiplies stops for small volumes, in a constrained urban context (traffic, parking, tight time slots). Logistics costs therefore concentrate on this very short portion of the journey, unlike long-haul transport where a single vehicle consolidates a large volume across few points.
Does the last mile apply only to deliveries to consumers?
No: while the term is strongly associated with B2C e-commerce, it also applies to final delivery to a business customer, a store, a workshop or an industrial site, whenever it is the last leg between a distribution point and the final recipient.
Related terms
Parcel carrier service · Freight consolidation · Transport plan · Tail lift · 3PL / 4PL · Service rate · Reverse logistics.
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