Plan, procure, execute, & track transportation for every shipment across your supply chain & logistics operations
A SaaS solution to help grow your business by achieving 100% perfect order execution at high volumes
Increase vehicle capacity utilization and customer promise adherence
Grow your business with omnichannel presence and automated pickups
Consolidate shipments for hub to hub movement across land and air
Real-time customer communications and collect accurate PODs
Orchestrate logistics operations with multiple 3rd party carriers
Achieve cost effective, scalable, sustainable, and customer centric deliveries
Orchestrate all your cross-border logistics operations with ease
Improve address accuracy, ensure first-attempt delivery success, reduce costs and boost customer experience
Gain end-to-end shipment visibility, get proactive alerts, and send customers live tracking links
Grow business in a dynamic world and manage operations across First, Middle & Last mile
Delight customers by seamlessly managing store and online orders across own fleet and 3rd party
Reduce freight costs & get end to end visibility across shipments
The last-mile delivery segment in Australia is undergoing a radical transformation. Driven by a surge in e-commerce, changing consumer expectations, and complex geographical challenges, the need for intelligent, agile, and cost-efficient delivery systems has never been greater. Australia’s logistics terrain demands smarter last mile solutions – ones that can handle remote area deliveries, dense metro routes, high fuel costs, and meet consumers’ rising expectations. This guide will help you understand the unique last-mile challenges in Australia and how Shipsy’s AI-powered logistics solutions are helping enterprises overcome them.
Last mile delivery refers to the very last step of the delivery process when a parcel is moved from a transportation hub to its final destination—which, usually, is a customer’s home address or a retail store. The primary focus is to ensure fast, accurate, and convenient delivery. Despite being the shortest segment of the supply chain, it is also the most complex and cost-intensive, often accounting for more than 50% of total logistics expenses. This phase plays a critical role in shaping customer satisfaction and brand perception.
Australia has witnessed a sharp acceleration in e-commerce adoption over the past few years. According to Australia Post’s 2024 eCommerce Industry Report, over 9.5 million Australian households shopped online in the past year—accounting for nearly 82% of the country’s residential population. This rise in online spending is putting tremendous pressure on delivery networks to keep pace, especially as consumers increasingly demand faster, more flexible, and transparent delivery options.
Retailers and logistics service providers are now being tasked with delivering not only speed, but also convenience and reliability. Last-mile delivery has become the most critical and cost-intensive part of the logistics chain, influencing customer satisfaction, brand perception, and profitability in equal measure.
Australia’s sheer size offers abundant opportunities for business expansion but also presents logistical challenges. Deliveries may need to traverse extensive distances, particularly when reaching remote or regional areas. The long distances between urban centers and remote areas significantly increase fuel costs, transit times, and vehicle wear and tear.
Delivering a package from Sydney to a regional town like Broken Hill can take over 2–3 days and cost up to 50% more than urban deliveries.
Many rural regions lack the warehousing, road connectivity, and logistics infrastructure required for smooth last-mile execution. This often leads to frequent delays, route deviations, and higher operational costs for deliveries outside metro regions.
Australia has been facing an ongoing shortage of skilled delivery drivers, especially in regional zones. This impacts delivery reliability and forces logistics players to either delay shipments or overpay for flexible workforce arrangements.
Customers expect next-day or even same-day deliveries with real-time tracking, flexible time windows, and instant customer support. Meeting these demands at scale without compromising profitability remains a critical challenge.
In densely populated cities, traffic bottlenecks can severely impact last-mile efficiency. Peak hour congestion, limited parking, and delivery time window restriction create delays, missed deliveries and fuel inefficiencies.
Shipsy’s advanced algorithms take into account real-time traffic, weather conditions, delivery time windows to recommend the most efficient delivery route and reduce cost across both metro and remote regions.
Logistics players often struggle to allocate deliveries efficiently, especially in areas where orders are unevenly distributed. Shipsy’s territory planner automatically generates balanced delivery territories based on geography, order density, and driver workload. This is especially effective in Australia, where route density varies drastically between metro and rural areas.
Manual delivery dispatching is error-prone and inefficient, especially when dealing with high order volumes or peak-day pressure. Using AI, Shipsy intelligently allocates orders to the most optimal delivery agents or carriers in real time, based on performance, delivery zone, SLA adherence, load capacity, and availability.
Real-time tracking is vital for managing logistics over Australia’s vast geography. Shipsy gives businesses complete visibility into every delivery —- across both owned fleets and third party carriers. Stakeholders can monitor driver movement, identify route deviations, manage delivery exceptions (e.g., delays, missed attempts), and receive high alerts for high risk orders.
Shipsy’s dashboard provides granular, real-time insights into driver’s productivity, carrier performance, delivery turnaround time (TAT), and failed delivery analysis on a single platform. Users can drill down to region, vehicle, route, or even driver level to identify bottlenecks and make data-driven improvements.
Shipsy’s mobile app empowers Australian delivery agents with real-time routing, stop-wise instructions, automated status updates, and direct communication with customers. The app supports digital proof through photos, QR scans, and signature—crucial for remote or unattended deliveries. Additionally, drivers can report delivery issues (e.g., gate locked, customer unavailable) directly from the app, helping supervisors respond instantly.
Shipsy’s AI-powered Gartner Recognized Last Mile Delivery solutions are empowering manufacturers, retailers and logistics service providers to:
To learn more about how Shipsy can help your businesses address its unique last mile delivery challenges simply click here for a demo.
With nearly 53% cost contribution to the logistics transportation, the last mile is rightly called as the longest mile. Here are the key metrics and KPIs you should track for last mile excellence.
A last-mile carrier manages last leg operations of the supply chain. Besides delivery, it also offers services like inventory & warehouse management, and reverse logistics.
