How to calculate the ROI of a logistics optimization project in the last mile

When someone on the team proposes to invest in route optimization software, the director's first question is always the same: And how much is this going to save me?

It's the right question. But the problem is that most companies only count part of the savings - fuel - and leave out the seven or eight concepts where real money is escaping every day without anyone seeing it on any bill.

This article gives you a method for calculating the full ROI of a logistics optimization project. Not with generic promises, but with specific variables that you can fill in with your company numbers.

Why the ROI of logistics is always underestimated

When it comes to logistics efficiency, the instinct is to look at the direct and visible costs: kilometers, liters of diesel, driving hours.

But an inefficient operation generates losses in layers that are harder to see:

• The manager who arrives at 6 in the morning to plan routes by hand and finishes at 9
• The customer who called three times this week and the fourth will no longer call — they will buy somewhere else
• The customer service worker who spends half a day answering “where is my order?”
• The day the holiday traffic chief left the operation in the hands of someone who didn't know how the routes worked

These costs do not appear on any line in the income statement. But they do exist. And they add up.

The 8 savings levers — with real examples

1. Reduction of kilometers, fuel and maintenance

It's the most tangible savings and the easiest to calculate. A route optimization engine reorganizes the order of stops to minimize the total distance traveled. In operations that are planned manually, the deviation from the optimal route is usually between 20% and 35%.

The calculation:

Imagine a company with 10 vans that travel an average of 150 km/day each:

• Current kilometers per year: 10 × 150 × 250 days = 375,000 km/year
• With a 30% reduction: 262,500 km/year — savings of 112,500 km
• At an estimated cost of 0.35 €/km (fuel + maintenance + amortization): 39,375€ annual savings

And this is not to mention that fewer kilometers are also fewer revisions, fewer tires and less time in the workshop, or even savings for an entire vehicle.

2. Planning productivity: 3 hours to 15 minutes

If your team plans the routes by hand, calculate how much time they spend doing so each morning. In companies with 5—15 vehicles, it is common for a manager to spend between 1.5 and 3 hours a day on this task: downloading orders, assigning them by zones, sorting them, printing sheets or sending WhatsApps.

With optimization software, that same planning is done in 5—15 minutes.

The calculation:

• Current planning time: 2 hours/day × 250 days = 500 hours/year
• Optimized time: 15 min/day × 250 days = 62.5 hours/year
• Savings: 437.5 hours/year — 87% less
• If the manager's hourly cost is 20 €/h: 8,750€ in annual savings

But the real number isn't just the cost of those hours. That's what that manager can do with that time: deal with incidents, improve relationships with customers, or not start the day already exhausted.

3. Real-time information: fewer calls, better decisions

Without real-time visibility, managing a fleet is like playing chess with your eyes closed. When you don't know where each driver is or how the route is going, you manage with calls. Lots of calls.

With continuous monitoring:

• The manager sees on the map if a route is being delayed and can act before the customer calls
• Stops can be reassigned in real time if a driver has an unforeseen event
• The customer automatically receives the updated ETA, without anyone having to call them

The invisible impact: each such interruption breaks the focus for at least 10—15 minutes. In a day with 15—20 follow-up calls, the manager loses between 2 and 4 hours of productive work.

4. Standardized processes: the basis for growth without chaos

A well-documented and systematized operation can be replicated. When the planning process lives in a person's head or in an Excel full of formulas that only they understand, scaling is impossible.

With standardized processes:

• Incorporating a new zone or a new driver is following the same flow, not improvising
• Opening a new warehouse or route does not require months of adaptation
• Performance is predictable, not dependent on who is there that day

This is the value that managers most underestimate until they want to grow and realize that their operation cannot scale without hiring more managers.

5. Reducing operational risk: what happens when “the one who knows” isn't there?

This is the most invisible cost of all, and also the most dangerous.

Almost all logistics companies have a “Manolo”: the person who has been doing the same routes for 12 years and who knows by heart which customer wants delivery before 10 o'clock, which street is not accessible with a large van and how to balance Tuesday's routes when there are two drivers leaving.

When Manolo goes on vacation, the following week is a disaster. And when Manolo retires or leaves the competition, the company loses an asset that is priceless — because he never documented it.

How to quantify it:

• How many hours of training and adaptation does a new manager require? If it's 3 months, you're talking about 480 hours of lost productivity
• How many failed deliveries or delays does a week without the expert manager generate? If the incident rate rises by 15%, that has a direct and indirect cost
• How many customers leave during this period of instability?

Systematizing knowledge isn't just efficiency — it's business insurance.

6. Better customer experience: the satisfied customer repeats and spends more

The impact of well-managed delivery doesn't end when the package arrives at the door. A customer who receives their order on time, with prior notice and without having to call anyone, is a returning customer.

And one who doesn't come back is a customer who found someone who does it better.

The calculation of the impact on revenues:

• If you have 500 active customers with an average annual ticket of 1,200€
• And an improvement in the delivery experience retains 5% of customers who are currently lost to incidents: 30 customers × 1,200€ = 36,000€ of retained revenue
• If these customers also increase their average ticket by 10% because they trust the service more: 500 × 120€ = 60,000 additional €

The quality of delivery is today the most difficult differentiator to copy in last-mile logistics. Not speed, not price — reliability.

7. Fewer manual tasks: How many people are there on your customer support team?

The “where's my order?” calls they are not just a nuisance. They are a personnel cost that can be measured precisely.

If your customer service team spends 40% of its time resolving delivery issues that could have been prevented — late calls, unlocated orders, delivery confirmations — you're paying salaries to manage operational inefficiencies.

The calculation:

• 2 customer service people at 25,000 €/year = 50,000 €/year
• 40% of the time in avoidable delivery efforts = 20,000 €/year in avoidable cost
• With automatic ETA notifications, digital delivery confirmation and public tracking for the customer, that percentage can drop to 10— 15%
• Potential savings: 12,500—15,000 €/year — without reducing the quality of service

8. Proactive distribution: Anticipate errors before they cost

A logistics error has two prices: the direct cost (the second delivery, the call, the discount to the customer) and the cost of the relationship (the trust that erodes, the negative review, the customer that does not renew).

Monitoring tools allow you to identify deviations in real time and take action before they become formal incidents. If a driver is 20 minutes late at the first stop, the manager can alert the next customer or reassign a delivery — instead of knowing when the customer is already angry.

The impact:

• If currently 8% of your deliveries cause some type of incident (delay, failure, complaint) and you can reduce it to 4%: out of 5,000 monthly deliveries, that's 200 fewer incidents per month
• If each incident costs between 15 and 30€ in time, redelivery and administrative management: 3,000—6,000 € monthly savings

9. Lower environmental impact: the door to contracts you couldn't win before

This point rarely appears in traditional ROI calculations. But in 2026, it has a direct impact on the revenues of many companies.

More and more medium-sized and large companies are demanding CO₂ emission data from their logistics operators as part of the tender process. If you can't measure and report your carbon footprint, you're directly left out of that conversation.

Optimizing routes reduces mileage — and with it, emissions. Routal automatically calculates the CO₂ emissions avoided on each route.

The strategic impact:

• Access to corporate clients with ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) requirements
• Differentiation from competitors who cannot measure or report their footprint
• Positioning in the face of ZBE (Low Emission Zones) regulations that already affect many cities

The ROI calculation: a complete example

Let's take a real company with these parameters:

Variable Value Number of vehicles 10 km drived/day per vehicle 150 km Operating days per year 250 Cost per km (fuel + maintenance) 0.35 €/kmCurrent planning time 2 hours/day Manager's hourly cost 20 €/h People in customer service2 (25,000 €/year each) Monthly deliveries 5,000 Current incident rate 8%

Estimated annual savings:

ConceptEstimated SavingsReduction of kilometers and fuel (30%) 39,375 €Planning productivity (-87%) 8,750 €Reduction in customer service management15,000 €Reduction of incidents and redeliveryes36,000—72,000 €Retention and growth of customers36,000—60,000 €Estimated total 135,000—195,000 €/year

Software costs:

For a fleet of 10 vehicles, Routal is around 5,000—8,000 €/year.

First-year ROI: between 1,600% and 2,300%

Or to put it another way: the software pays for itself in the first 2—4 weeks of operation.

Invisible costs hurt the most

When someone says “I can't justify this investment”, it's almost always because they're just counting fuel. And that's like valuing a company only by its cash flow.

The real costs of an inefficient logistics operation are:

• Manager's time That I could be doing other things
• Repeated errors because no one has systematized them
• Customers who are leaving because the delivery was not what they expected
• Knowledge that goes away When does the person who had it leave
• Contracts that don't fit Because you can't prove your carbon footprint

None of these appear on the diesel bill. But they all appear, in one way or another, in the income statement.

Where to start

Before evaluating any tool, do this exercise:

1. Calculate your real planning cost: minutes per day × days per year × manager's hourly cost
2. Estimate your incidence rate: How many deliveries per month do a call, a redelivery or a claim generate? How much does each one cost?
3. Ask customer support: What percentage of your interactions are about logistics? How much time do they spend?

With those three numbers on the table, the conversation about ROI changes completely.

If you want to do that calculation with your company data, at Routal we help you build it before you make any decisions. Talk to us

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