Understanding Delivery Drivers: The Key to Last Mile Success

| Transportation & Logistics

Driver Envelope

When a customer opens their front door, they should be happy to see the delivery driver.

Last mile delivery success is – quite literally – in your delivery drivers’ hands. So businesses need to understand their perspective.

That’s why we talked to more than 1,200 randomly selected delivery drivers in 11 countries around the world for our driver research report.

We got some fascinating feedback.

The customer cannot see the challenges of last mile delivery. These include driver shortages, difficulties finding and accessing the right address, traffic congestion and bad weather, growing delivery volumes, and high first-delivery failure rates.

Driver profiles – a popular job for people in their 30s

The average age of delivery drivers around the world is 34 years for men and 32 years for women. Italy’s workforce is the oldest with an average age of 38, while India’s is the youngest at 28. As businesses struggle with the current driver shortage, this suggests valuable opportunities to bring older workers into the last mile.

Key Findings Drivers

Delivery drivers’ top challenges and preferred Tools

Delivery drivers say their biggest problems in the last mile are traffic and difficulty accessing the delivery address. They also don’t like to carry multiple bulky scanning devices, preferring to use just a single smartphone.

In fact, 82% of all the delivery drivers we talked to use a smartphone for multiple tasks.

Key Findings Driver Mexico

Delivery drivers’ working hours

Many delivery drivers work 30 hours or more per week but, even so, 39% have one or more additional jobs. This means they lack the time and bandwidth to cope with complicated systems and processes.

Instead, they need streamlined and user-friendly procedures, especially to help new staff get up to speed quickly.

Many have been in their current jobs for between 6 months and 2 years. Salaried workers are most likely to stay in the role, while 40% of experienced contractors will leave in less than a year. This significant level of churn suggests contractors are being used to deal with peak periods. Alongside this, there’s an emerging trend of gig employment.

Discover what driver’s think about technology in the last mile

The importance of experience

For most, this is not their first time as a delivery driver. Even 60% of gig workers have delivery experience. While the rate of pay is important, 40% of delivery drivers also say that work-life balance and flexibility are crucial.

As experienced delivery drivers are in limited supply, it’s obviously important to listen to and understand their perspectives. That way, companies can give them a great employee experience.

How long have drivers been in their present job (by % of drivers overall)

How long have drivers been in their present job graph

Find out more

This article covers only a small selection of the trends and insights in our report. To find out more, please download your own copy here: Driver Views from the Last Mile. And if you’d like to know how Scandit can help your business in the last mile, get in touch today.